Qlogic Storage Networking (Unified Fabric Pilot), Installation Manual

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B
Data Center Bridging
Technology
The following descriptions of Enhanced Ethernet were taken from Ethernet: The
Converged Network Ethernet Alliance Demonstration at SC'09, published by the
Ethernet Alliance November, 2009.
Data Center Bridging (DCB)
For Ethernet to carry LAN, SAN and IPC traffic together and achieve network
convergence, some necessary enhancements are required. These enhancement
protocols are summarized as data center bridging (DCB) protocols
, also referred
to as Enhanced Ethernet (EE) , which are defined by the IEEE 802.1 data center
bridging task group. A converged Ethernet network is built based on the following
DCB protocols:

DCBX and ETS

Priority Flow Control

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet

iSCSI
DCBX and ETS
Existing Ethernet standards cannot control and manage the allocation of network
bandwidth to different network traffic sources and types (traffic differentiation).
Neither can existing standards allow prioritizing of bandwidth usage across these
sources and traffic types. Data center managers must either over-provision
network bandwidth for peak loads, accept customer complaints during these
periods, or manage traffic on the source side by limiting the amount of non-priority
traffic entering the network.
Overcoming these limitations is a key to enabling Ethernet as the foundation for
true converged data center networks supporting LAN, storage, and
inter-processor communications.