[c-nsp] Nexus 5K FCoE to FC breakout

[Justin C Darby]

Hello David,

This is entirely my personal opinion and I'm sure some folks in the Nexus
BU at Cisco would hit me for saying this given the chance.

Unless you are using legacy FC devices, hold off on the 5K for this. The
reason I say this is because a new class of storage devices and HBA's that
use 10GbE native are hitting the market. Some vendors are mostly there,
others not at all. I beleive QLogic has HBA's available for this, and I
know the major storage vendors are working on bringing FCoE storage devices
to market. You've also got alternatives to FCoE that can use 10GbE for
native transport now (iSCSI/ATA-over-Ethernet/etc).

The operating cost (relative to performance) of using 10GbE to do FCoE
native are considerably more advantageous than just consolidating 4xFC onto
10GbE. However, if you've already got a bunch of FC gear and you want to
consolidate the transport, there are people using 5K's for this (though I
am not one of them), and given my experience with the 7K i am sure it'll
work out as designed.

Have fun,
Justin

P.S. Opinions here are my own, not the views of the U.S. Government, etc.

-----cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net wrote: -----
To: "Cisco NSP ((E-mail))'" <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
From: David Hughes
Sent by: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
Date: 04/15/2009 07:07PM
Subject: [c-nsp] Nexus 5K FCoE to FC breakout

Hi  Seeing as this is all bleeding edge, I'd be very interested in any
first hand experiences with breaking out FCoE to traditional FC via an
N5K.  Is it working OK?  Are you running it as a switch or in NPV   mode?
How's the interop with your FC fabric (and who's gear are you   using for
FC switching).  Whos CNA's are downstream of the N5K?  Any   thoughts,
observations etc you can share about this brave new world   would be
greatly appreciated?   Thanks  David ...
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