PSARC 2010/251 FC over IB support.

On Saturday i wrote about the new converged networking adapter in the Oracle portfolio. However you shouldn't forget that there is a second possible interconnect for a single-fabric network (converged IP and SAN fabric). It's Infiniband - delivering 40 GBit/s for a while now and 104 GBit/s in 2011 (they are changing the coding scheme thus yielding better data rates).

That said a single fabric network is nothing without two things: At first gateways into legacy networks like LAN or SAN. This can be adressed with components like the BridgeX stuff from Mellanox (for example an [URL="http://www.mellanox.com/content/pages.php?pg=products_dyn&product_family=54&menu_section=52#tab-two"]Infiniband to 10GbE/8 GB SAN gateway[/URL]). The other part - and thats the reason why i'm writing this article - is something in the operating system that is capable to speak with such a gateways. With [URL="http://arc.opensolaris.org/caselog/PSARC/2010/251/"]PSARC/2010/251[/URL] there is a case waiting for approval to implement this other component, to implement "Fibre Channel over IB Support" in Opensolaris.

BTW: When you search for a reason to use Infiniband, you should search for the 802.3ba papers for 40 GBit/s or 100 GBit/s Ethernet ... this won't be cheap ... we talk about totally different components here.

[url=http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6705-PSARC-2010251-FC-over-IB-support..html]Read More about [PSARC 2010/251 FC over IB support....[/url]