Knowledge Base

Fibre Channel is a computer communications protocol designed to meet the many requirements related to the ever increasing demand for high performance information transfer.

A technical overview of Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel, which is used for high-speed data transfers, supports several higher layer protocols including Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and Internet Protocol (IP). Until now, SCSI has been the only widely used protocol over Fibre Channel. IP over Fibre Channel had not been successful mainly due to inadequate specification in the standards. Currently IP specifications have reached a stage where interoperable implementations are possible. Although some support does exist for SCSI on Linux, there is no support for IP on Linux. This thesis aims at designing, developing, testing and evaluating a Fibre Channel driver for IP on Linux.

FC-PI-2 specifies both Electrical and Optical interfaces for Fibre Channel. This document focuses on the Electrical Physical Layer up to 4G speeds. This document describes the unique characteristics specific for FC devices as well attempts to introduce the generic topics involved in serial based technologies.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet is a data center protocol designed to transfer Fibre Channel frames over commodity Ethernet equipment.

Browse through some of the technologies and functions used in high-performance data acquisition systems for high-energy physics experiments.

iFCP is one form of storage over TCP/IP that allows hosts and Fibre Channel storage devices to communicate directly. It is an encapsulation protocol that dictates the means by which Fibre Channel frames become the payload in an iFCP message. In addition, iFCP introduces a few new types of messages for purposes of control. This thesis is comprised of the design and implementation of iFCP end devices. The initiator has been implemented as a software module that behaves like a Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter with an attached encapsulator. The target has been implemented as a stand-alone software program that acts both as an encapsulator and as a Fibre Channel switch that is attached through a generator to a Fibre Channel disk.

The Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) has been used to transmit data between applications (Initiators) and storage devices (Targets). One of the major limitations of SCSI has been the length of the SCSI bus. With the evolution of Storage Area Networks (SANs), several protocols have been proposed to extend the length of the SCSI bus e.g., Fibre Channel, SCSI Encapsulation Protocol (SEP), and Internet SCSI (iSCSI). The evaluation of these technologies requires the use of an Initiator and a Target that implement the said protocols. A large portion of what such Initiators or Targets need to do from a SCSI perspective can be isolated into a logical code unit referred to as a mid-level. While there exists in the Linux kernel a generic SCSI Initiator mid-level that drivers written for various Initiators can interface with, no corresponding facility exists for the Target side. This thesis involves the development of a Generic SCSI Target midlevel for Linux along with implementing front-end drivers for Fibre Channel, SEP and iSCSI that can utilize the said Target mid-level. Other uses for the Target Emulator are as a bridge between two protocols and as an interface for SAN Management.