History 2004: 4Gb FC in Starting Blocks

It’s certain this time: after 2Gb/s, FC fabric will increase to 4Gb/s.

There was some hesitation, of course. Wouldn’t it be better to jump directly to 10Gb FC with the advantage of taking on 10GbE more directly (now available at around $3,500 per port), even if there’s still the disadvantage of 2Gb/s compatibility.

When we mention compatibility, incidentally, we mean the potential for each port to detect connection speeds automatically (1,2 or 4Gb/s), to adapt to them, and thus for the user to maintain its current switches.

Will the arrival of 4Gb/s occur soon enough to restrain the passions of iSCSI, until now considered at least twice as inexpensive, although twice as slow as the 2Gb/s FC SAN?

Nearly all manufacturers expect to launch their 4Gb/s connectivity product at roughly the same price as the 2GB/s unit, which was also the case during the transition from 1Gb/s to 2Gb/s.

“We’ve announced the 4Gb/s at the same price as the 2Gb/s,” marvels Juan De Zulueta, Brocade’s director of EMEA, South and Latin America.

With the new transfer rate, the gap is growing between FC and iSCSI, with FC winning, awaiting of course the deployment of 10GbE.

The first to deliver 4Gb/s switches is the leader of the sector, Brocade Communications, which boasts an installed base WW of nearly 4 million FC ports. Cisco and McData will be ready in early 2005. As for 4Gb HBAs, Emulex announced its LP1100 family in single- or dual-channel versions at the same time as Brocade’s announcement. Launched towards the end of October, Brocade’s line of SilkWorm 4100 4Gb/s units is offered in a 1U configuration of 16, 24 or 32 ports. It’s based on the 5th generation of Brocade ASIC, supporting a 4×8-port group that allows full-duplex trunk data rates up to 32Gb/s between switches. Next to follow at Brocade will be 4Gb/s directors, which will nearly double in speed, but also in number of ports: up to 256.

The new SilkWorm line has already landed 2 major OEM customers: IBM for Big Blue’s TotalStorage SANs, with qualification for the eServer iSeries, pSeries and xSeries, and Hitachi Data Systems for its Thunder 9500, Lightning 9900 and the high-end TagmaStore disk arrays.

Next year, the entire Brocade line will move on to 4Gb/s, from its switches from 8 to 16 ports, to its directors to 128 ports.

After 4Gb/s, the manufacturer will reposition to 8Gb/s compatible, rather than to the more costly 10Gb/s, which will oblige users to opt for full replacement of their connectivity.

McData, always chasing Brocade, will release its new 4Gb/s line in early 2005, Sphereon 4400 at 8, 12 and 16 ports, as well as the 4700 at 16, 24 and 32 ports, with prices also close to those of the current 2Gb/s version. The 4710 model will include 24 4Gb/s ports and two ISLs. In January, we expect the announcement of a 4Gb/s and 10Gb/s 256-port director.

Cisco Systems, which still has to prove that its debut in FC connectivity wasn’t just a mistake, expects something in early 2005 in 4Gb/s as well as 10Gb/s, with the latter only for ISLs.

The other great deal for switch makers are blade servers, a new market they can’t afford to miss. Blades are mounted vertically instead of horizontally inside a rack, and require denser switches. IDC projects that the FC embedded switch market will grow 272% from 2003 to 2007. Brocade already secured OEM deals from IBM for the eServer BladeCenter back in May, and with HP for the MSA1000 “Starter SAN” and the forthcoming Bladeservers, expected in 2005.

“We have sold 500 switch blades in Europe over the past 4 months,” said De Zulueta.

In this sector, McData is turning to Qlogic, a forerunner in switches for blade servers, following its recent multi-year alliance. The first product released will incorporate Qlogic hardware with 6 ports and firmware that enables interoperability with McData fabrics. They can already be used on IBM server blades to access FC network. Cisco, meanwhile, has no blade server offering.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 203 on December 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.