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FCIA: INCITS T11 Standards Committee Completed FC Physical Interface (FC-PI-7) Standard Specifications for 64Gb FC

Delivering real world full-duplex storage bandwidth of 12,800MB/s

In a move that drives storage interconnect innovation for next-generation data centers, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced the INCITS T11 standards committee has completed the FC Physical Interface (FC-PI-7) standard specifications for 64Gb FC by forwarding the document to the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) for publication.

FC roadmap

The completion of the 64GFC standard marks another milestone on he FCIA’s speed roadmap, and is accompanied by seventh generation (Gen 7) INCITS T11 standard enhancements.

Completion of the FC-PI-7 standard is a trigger for companies in the FC industry to begin development of components and test equipment which support deployments of 64Gb FC and Gen 7 solutions for the SAN market,” said Mark Jones, president and COB, FCIA, and director, technical marketing and performance, Broadcom Inc.Gen 7 FC is the perfect combination of performance improvements and features that compliments the rapid evolution of all flash data centers.

At the time of FC-PI-7 publication, 64Gb FC will be the fastest single-lane serial transmission networking speed available, capable of delivering real world full-duplex storage bandwidth of 12,800MB/s. Backwards compatibility is maintained for interconnections with 16Gb FC and 32Gb FC ports as well as continued use of the SFP form factor and cabling interface supporting 100-meter OM4 multi-mode fiber cable lengths which are prevalent in today’s datacenters. Gen 7 FC will integrate into existing SAN infrastructures.

After more than 20 years, the FC industry remains strong and is showing renewed strength in the marketplace.” said Casey Quillin, director, network security and data center appliance and SAN market research, Dell’Oro Group. “With the growing demand for flash storage arrays and virtualized datacenters, the development of 64Gb FC and Gen 7 FC is likely to reduce potential network bottlenecks, maximize new storage system performance, while protecting existing FC investments.

The advent of Gen 7 FC also encompasses many of the INCITS T11 developments and standards since the launch of the Gen 6.

Gen 7 features include:

  • Fastest single-lane networking speed currently available
    Support for FC-PI-7 with FC speeds up to 64Gb FC, which represents real world storage performance of up to 12,800MB/s full duplex over a single lane serial SFP+ cable interface. Gen 7 will also include the upcoming FC-PI-7p standard which is a four lane parallel technology of 256Gb FC capable of up to 51,200MB/s full duplex.

  • NVMe over FC
    NVMe over FC (FC-NVMe) brings predictable lossless performance of NVMe over Fabrics to the enterprise robustness that users have come to expect of FC SANs. Gen 7 FC will benefit from the maturity of the second generation of the T11 FC-NVMe standard that brings enhanced ‘Sequence-Level’ error recovery.

  • Automatic buffer credit recovery
    Maintains maximum performance between ports under marginal link conditions. Enhancements to the already robust lossless network protocol include the ability to maintain the level of Buffer-to-Buffer credits automatically between FC port connections.

  • VM awareness
    Transport VM identity information across the storage network to give SAN administrators better insight into VM application health and performance.

  • Automation – Dev Ops
    FC management constructs to facilitate orchestrated management and automation. SAN management concepts such as target driven zoning and peer zones.

  • Link degrade signaling
    New standard for 64Gb FC optics that upon detecting a degraded link signal will inform the linked port of the detected degraded signal resulting in error reporting and potential recovery.

With 64Gb FC and Gen7 FC, you’ll have the agility of virtualization and reduce the cost of allocated storage capacity, storage administration, and SAN infrastructure,” said Rupin Mohan, marketing chairman, FCIA and R&D, chief technologist, SAN, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. “The combination of the latest generation of servers and all-flash arrays connected with Gen 7 FC will enable storage bandwidth starved applications to accelerate like never before.

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