April 20th, 2009
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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.
Posted by Joy Jiang at 1:19 pm. Filed under General | Permalink
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