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• Increased IT efficiency and business agility
A converged network streamlines and eliminates repeated administrative tasks such as server and
network provisioning with a “wire once” deployment model. The converged network also improves
business agility letting data centers dynamically and rapidly respond to requests for new or expanded
services, new servers and new configurations. The converged network fully complements server
virtualization in addressing the on-demand requirements of the next generation data center where
applications and the infrastructure are provisioned on the fly.
• Seamless extension of Fibre Channel SANs in the data center
Fibre Channel is the predominant storage protocol deployed by enterprise data centers. With the
adoption of blade servers and server virtualization, there is an increased demand for Fibre Channel
SANs in these environments. FCoE addresses this requirement by leveraging 10Gb/s Ethernet and
extending proven Fibre Channel SAN benefits. The use of light-weight encapsulation for FCoE also
facilitates FCoE gateways that are less compute intensive and thus ensures high levels of storage
networking performance.
• Alignment with existing operating models and administrative domains
FCoE based converged networks gives IT architects the ability to design a data center architecture
that aligns with existing organization structure and operating models. This minimizes the need to
unify or significantly overhaul operating procedures used by storage and networking IT staff.
FCoE Technology Overview FCoE is the industry standard that drives network convergence in the enterprise data center. The FCoE
technology leverages lossless Ethernet infrastructure to carry native Fibre Channel traffic over Ethernet.
Figure 2: FCoE Encapsulates complete Fibre Channel frames on to an
Ethernet frames
Leveraging 10Gb/s Ethernet to carry both the data networking and storage networking traffic enables
convergence in the data center networks and thus reduces the number of cables, switch ports and adapters,
which lowers the overall power and cooling requirements and the total cost of ownership.