Fiber Channel vs iSCSI

[Yaboto]

Please tell me the difference between FC and iscsi

[Víctor Cespón]

iSCSI sends SCSI Commands over an IP link
Fiber channel sends them over an fiber channel link.

IP links can vary from 10 Mb/s to 10 Gb/s
Fiber channel can be 1, 2, 4 or 8 Gb/s

Fiber channel needs dedicated fiber channel sitches
iSCSI uses existing IP switches.

Fiber channel uses dedicated cards
iSCSI uses the network card on the sever

iSCSI is intended to be a low cost, but slower way to access storage. You use existing IP network to access the storage. The disks appear as if they were directly connected to the server.

[Steven Clementi]

"Fiber channel needs dedicated fiber channel sitches
iSCSI uses existing IP switches."

Though this is true, there are some LAN switches that are better suited for iSCSI traffic than others.

Additionally, when designing an iSCSI solution... you would generally not use your existing LAN. You would design an iSCSI network as part of the solution (Enterprise level anyway).


"Fiber channel uses dedicated cards
iSCSI uses the network card on the sever"


Though this may be true for a software based iSCSI solution, there are hardware based iSCSI network adaptors that would be "dedicated" to the task.


Steven