As I discussed last time, developers of FCoE network equipment face four key challenges when verifying equipment behavior, performance, and responsiveness. The first challenge is working with the multi-protocol nature of FCoE.

As a converged network technology, FCoE involves significantly more than simply implementing a new protocol. Because the FCoE network connects the FC SAN to the Ethernet network, the entire network is effectively involved in the mixed transportation of protocols. Developers must perform end-to-end analysis of mixed data across 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel links to ensure that these protocols are handled properly, accurately, quickly, and reliability.

To achieve this, developers must be able to capture and analyze multiple protocols at the same time. Note that the list of possible protocols involved may be quite large – FCoE, FC, Enhanced Ethernet, iSCSI, etc. – and that problems may arise at any transition, cross over, or end point. Test setups which can only monitor a few protocols due to the limitation of available interfaces prevent developers from comprehensively evaluating and testing FCoE capabilities on real-world FCoE network topologies.

Another critical element of multi-protocol analysis is the ability to accurately timestamp packets and frames. Unless traffic from different protocols can be correlated within the same time domain, developers will have great difficulty in tracking particular exchanges as they cross protocol domains. Without this capability, developers will be severely curtailed in their ability to perform multi-protocol FCoE analysis.

Designing for FCoE goes far beyond simply implementing new network protocols. As a converged network technology, FCoE brings together multiple protocols in addition to introducing new capabilities through Enhanced Ethernet. In order to accurately verify compliance, evaluate performance, and guarantee reliability, developers must create comprehensive test setups and scenarios that confirm traffic integrity as data crosses protocol domains. As a consequence, testing must encompass a variety of operating conditions that are more complex to verify than when working with the LAN and SAN solely. For example, FCoE packets possess two CRC values – one for the encapsulated FC frame and one for the Enhanced Ethernet packet.

Finisar has identified four specific testing challenges that developers must address when designing multi-protocol, FCoE-based equipment:

1) As an FCoE network is comprised of multiple protocols that must logically interoperate seamlessly across different physical networks, verifying equipment performance and reliability requires full access and visibility to network interactions at all layers.

2) Given the high data rates and extensive capabilities of FCoE, hardware-based testing tools are required that enable 100% line rate capture and achieve sufficient bandwidth saturation such as is required to effectively test Priority Flow Control (PFC) mechanisms.

3) Fabric-only tests using traffic generation tools may be unable to verify certain Data Center Bridging (DCB) protocols – such as congestion notification (CN) – that require that all devices in a link participate in network management.

4) Developers must be able to test both the LAN and SAN components of a network simultaneously.

Developers need to overcome each of these testing challenges in order to confidently release product to market. Over my next few posts, I’ll discuss each of these challenges in detail.

Recent news from Cisco has started what some experts foresee as a major shakeup that will significantly alter the landscape of network equipment vendors. The industry giant’s move to “Unify, simplify, amplify” communications networks is based on a strategic change of focus, with Cisco announcing that it will begin offering products that will directly compete with segments of its current customer base. To characterize this move solely as Cisco entering the server market, however, is to perhaps underestimate its near-term impact.

Consider that one of the primary value propositions of FCoE is unification of the network. Rather than have to maintain distinct storage and data network infrastructures, organizations will be able to deploy a single, logical network using virtualization and Ethernet as underlying technologies. However, while bridging networks across a single interface will simplify network access from an application standpoint, such unification is only possible through added complexity introduced into the network hardware itself.

One of the challenges for designers of next-generation network equipment will be in implementing this added complexity so as to be transparent to network administrators. If integrating equipment from different vendors presents too many problems, FCoE adoption will stall. From this perspective, Cisco’s announcement can be seen as an attempt, yes, to expand its market scope, but also to simplify deployment through unification at both the hardware and management software level. Put another way, by offering a system comprised of servers and fabrics, network administrators will not have to purchase various components and integrate them together as these issues will already have been taken care of. For example, Cisco’s new backplane consolidates myriad cables to a single cable. Additionally, a single system could house thousands of virtual servers. Without question, the drive to unify the network is changing how networks are being designed and deployed. FCoE is playing a key role in enabling this unification from a network perspective.

Certainly there is much that is controversial with this approach. There is also the question, as these systems come to market, of whether such systems will support existing infrastructure or interoperate only with a limited subset of available equipment that requires a more homogenous (i.e., single vendor) implementation.

Regardless of whether one views Cisco’s announcement as a prelude to a vendor shake down or as a welcome push to increase the momentum behind FCoE, it is clear that this industry leader is serious in its commitment to FCoE. For a technology that is already very promising given the benefits it brings to next-generation data centers, such strong support from the number one network equipment vendor can only mean accelerated adoption.