Deployment Guide: Network Convergence with Emulex® OneConnect™ OCe10102-F FCoE CNA and Windows Server Platform
The Data Center Networking Challenge
Data center managers are clearly in need of networking solutions that contain the sprawl of network infrastructure and enable an adaptive next-generation network. The solution for optimizing the data center network must be capable of addressing the following high level requirements:
nConsolidate—Replace multiple 1GbE links with a high- bandwidth 10GbE infrastructure, significantly reducing the number of switch ports, adapter ports and cables.
nConverge—Unify networking and storage traffic to a single network, eliminating the need for dedicated networks for each traffic type.
nVirtualize—Virtualize the underlying physical network infrastructure and provide service level guarantees for each type of traffic. In addition, the solution must be capable of responding to dynamic changes in network services based on the business demands of data center applications.
FCoE Technology Overview
The FCoE protocol specification provides for direct encapsulation of a complete Fibre Channel frame (including checksum and framing bits) within an Ethernet frame and avoids the overhead of any intermediate protocols (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 FCoE encapsulation in Ethernet
This lightweight encapsulation ensures that FCoE-capable Ethernet switches are less compute-intensive, providing high performance that is typical of a Fibre Channel network. By retaining Fibre Channel as the upper layer protocol, FCoE fully supports critical Fibre Channel capabilities, including fabric login, zoning and Logical Unit Number (LUN) masking.
Figure 3 shows how networking and Fibre Channel software stacks use a common Ethernet infrastructure to achieve convergence in the data center.
Figure 1 DCB enables multiple traffic type over a single link
Data Center Bridging:
The Foundation for Network Convergence
The IEEE Data Center Bridging (DCB) standard enables multiple traffic types over a single link, or network convergence, as shown in Figure 1 for FCoE.
The key DCB standards that enable network convergence are:
n Priority Flow Control (PFC)—Pause-based I/O management between an initiator and target on a multi-protocol Ethernet link that insures low latency and eliminates re-transmissions for lost packets (referred to as “lossless” Ethernet)
| n Quality of Service (QoS)—Support for 8 network | Figure 3 | Networking and Fibre Channel stacks |
| traffic priorities |
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nEnhanced Transmission Selection (ETS)—Bandwidth allocation for multiple protocols
