FCIA
16 GB FIBRE CHANNEL
19
Fibre Channel run database and enterprise-class applications.
While database applications do not usually
require large amounts of bandwidth when individual records are updated or read, the servers need to be designed for the demanding times like backup and data mining (analytics) when every record may be copied or queried. Backup and recovery applications are the high- water marks for which servers need to be designed. Another class of applications that benefit from 16GFC is streaming I/O applications.
A single I/O from these
applications can transfer a block of data that is several orders of magnitude larger than blocks in general purpose file systems.
complete and controllers and drives are sending out sequential reads or writes as fast as they can. Another application of 16GFC links in the data center is between data centers, storage arrays or clouds. During data center consolidations, disaster recovery and equipment changes, users often have a need to migrate terabytes (TBs) or even petabytes (PBs) of data between storage arrays.
The time to transfer large blocks of data is often limited by the speed of the links connecting the devices instead of processors or controllers that may limit the throughput during normal processing. Table 4 shows the time required to transfer large amounts of data at 1,600 MBps with 16GFC.
When time is money, 16GFC is better. VDI is a
growing trend in enterprises where virtual desktops in the data center are sent to users on a variety of devices.
VDI
has the advantage of centralized management where applications and hardware can be easily upgraded in the data center and virtually shipped around the world.
VDI has large bandwidth requirements when large numbers of users log into their virtual desktops at the same time. This spike in activity leads to long startup times unless high performance VDI systems are used. 16GFC is one of the many components that can help improve performance at these critical initialization times. Storage arrays based on memory or solid state disks (SSDs) are enabling a new level of performance in high performance computing. With lower latency and higher IOPs than traditional storage arrays, 16GFC interfaces to SSDs are expected to improve the bandwidth density of their front panels by doubling the throughput of their ports.
SSDs have been applied to A single I/O can take minutes or hours to
many high bandwidth applications like online gaming where these applications have already reached bandwidth requirements of 50 GB/s. With the price of SSDs dropping quickly, SSDs should be able to address many more applications where performance is more important than capacity.
Summary Speed wins!
It’s not rocket science to understand that
a link that is twice as fast as a slower link can do more work. While many applications won’t use the full extent of a 16GFC link yet, over the next few years, traffic and applications will grow to fill the capacity of 16GFC. The refresh cycle for networks is often longer than that of servers and storage, so 16GFC will remain in the network for years. With more virtual machines being added to a physical server, performance levels can quickly escalate beyond the levels supported by 8GFC. To future-proof deployments, 16GFC should be considered to be the most efficient way to transfer large amounts of data in data centers.
With proprietary
trunking technology at 16GFC, users can get up to 128GFC of performance that delivers more bandwidth per power and cost.
16GFC will be the best performer in several applications. 16GFC can reduce the number of ISLs in the data center or migrates a large amount of data for array migration or disaster recovery. High performance applications like VDI that use SSDs or require high bandwidth are ideal applications for 16GFC. 16GFC combines the latest technologies in an energy efficient manner to provide the highest performing SANs in the world. With these benefits, 16GFC is more than two times better than 8GFC.
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM WIN 2010
Data Size Time to Transfer Data at 1600 MBps 100 GB 1 minute 1 TB
10 minutes 10 TB
100 TB 1 PB
1 Hour, 45 minutes 17 Hours 1 Week
Table 4: Data Migration Examples
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