Migrating to FCoE sounds good on paper, but a key concern for network administrators is how to protect existing network performance when FCoE moves in.  In the past, network planners brought in expensive Fibre Channel equipment because of the guarantees it provided through its dedicated link architecture: guaranteed performance, guaranteed latency, and guaranteed robustness.  Ethernet is well-known for not providing these guarantees. 

In order for network administrators to feel confident enough to migrate to FCoE, they will need to be able to test and verify real-world performance against the marketing claims of FCoE equipment manufacturers.  For example, the IEEE FCoE standards being developed provide delivery guarantees, better latency performance, and higher bandwidth utilization.  While the standard drafts are as good as they sound, developers and administrators still need a way to verify that a particular implementation has been successful in meeting latency requirements. 

Likewise, administrators will need to be able to verify end-to-end performance.  An FCoE link is comprised of an Ethernet link accessing Fibre Channel storage.  Measuring performance up to the transition point fails to take into account all of the unexpected foibles of what happens when crossing protocol domains.  Developers and administrators need to be able to prove performance end-to-end; it’s simply too important a decision to leave to trust or assumption.  

Finally, key to generating sales of FCoE is the ability to compare native Fibre Channel to FCoE implementations.  Disruptive technologies need to not only reduce cost compared to incumbent technologies, they also need to provide greater functionality and/or benefit in order to overcome the inertia of the market buying what it is already used to.  Hard numbers will always sell more than wordy promises. 

Reaching the technological milestones of FCoE is important, but being able to prove value is what will carry FCoE to market successfully.

For FCoE to succeed in these economic conditions, it must bring down costs in the data center.  Much has been said about the benefits of consolidating Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks, in particular how FCoE consolidates hardware.  Rather than requiring two types of adapters for SAN and LAN – Fibre Channel HBAs and Ethernet NICs – FCoE allows SAN adapters to be collocated with LAN adapters.  Such an adapter is called a Converged Network Adapter (CNA). 

Converged networks integrate storage data and communication data on to the same pipeline with the FCoE technology  Network management, however, doesn’t change. Thus, FCoE technology promises to reduce the cost of hardware while requiring no additional spending for new management software, an overall cost-saving solution. 

Initial FCoE deployments, to the surprise of some, have not resulted in the substantial deployment and operational savings expected.  One reason for this is that the CNA and FCoE switch don’t have the similar cost structure compared to their corresponding peers.  These initial FCoE adapters are, in fact, more like two adapters crammed onto the same card.  As such, they cost almost as much as the two adapters they are replacing. 

Integration at the card level is not sufficient to reduce cost enough to entice network storage administrators to abandon the security and trust they have in their existing FC networks.  Equipment developers will need to leverage integration at the chip level – such as developing a single IC that integrates both FC HBA and Ethernet NIC ASIC functionality – to achieve the savings that will attract real attention. 

Another cost factor affecting FCoE technology is that FCoE is based mainly on 10 Gigabit Ethernet.  The cost savings of 10GE has not been sufficient compared to 1GE to really accellerate deployment.  Current efforts to further bring down the hardware cost of 10GE include higher level integration of discrete components such as LAN-On-Motherboard (LOM).  

Unless FCoE and Converged Ethernet can readily demonstrate significant cost savings in data centers, it seems they will still have a long way to go.