Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a protocol for transmission of Fibre Channel in full duplex Ethernet based networks. The main objective of introducing Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is consolidation of I/O on the basis of Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) with respect to the reduction of physical complexity of network structures especially in data centers. Previously we discussed about Fibre Channel Technology and mentioned that Fibre Channel over Ethernet will be separately.

What is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

With Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), it is possible to use a single physical infrastructure for the transmission of Fibre Channel and conventional Ethernet. Thereby Fibre Channel over Ethernet provide the scalability and higher bandwidth network structures with currently common 10 Gbps norm which represent significant advantages through the use of Ethernet for transporting Fibre Channel frame while eliminating drawbacks of the classical Ethernet protocol, such as the frame loss in overload situations; for improvements for those issues, the Ethernet standard is needed to ensure a  reliable transmission based on Ethernet.

The standardization of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) began in April 2007.

Application of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

The main use of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) as mentioned above, is  I/O consolidation which is also referred as network convergence . In this regard, the consolidation of Ethernet-based networks and storage area networks (SAN), is assigned a common name with efficient physical infrastructure. The main advantages of this is, significantly lower cabling and lower overall cost of building a common infrastructure, as well as representing the better resource utilization of physical infrastructure.

Another advantage of Fibre Channel over Ethernet is certainly seen in the currently prevailing virtualization strategy of many data center providers in conjunction with FCoE, because ultimately Fibre Channel over Ethernet in practice is a kind of virtualization technology based on physical media is and as such partially transferred for virtualized server to the host systems.