Fibre Channel Primer

20 Fibre Channel: Connection to the Future
all data processing into an integrated environment. This requirement
opened the door for open, standards-based solutions. Now, companies
are connecting their mainframes with enterprise and department
servers for distributed client/server architectures.
Distributed computing and parallel processing has resulted in a
significant increase in process-to-process communications. At the
same time, the data storage requirements have exploded. This new
paradigm only works if data can be moved and shared quickly. The
need for very high-bandwidth and extremely low-latency I/O is
paramount. Fibre Channel is the solution that delivers.
l Fibre Channel
backbone using
hubs and switches
l Fibre Channel
cluster computing
l Fibre Channel
network for the
design center
l Router links
legacy LANs
Riser
Department
or
Workgroup
Data
Center
Figure 3.3 Fibre Channel networks deliver higher performance
Design
Center