This paper describes the move to 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel, the benefits and the
major applications that will benefit from this newest interconnect technology.
Introduction
Since the 2001 introduction of 2 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) Fibre Channel
(FC) technology, engineers have been working on the next generation of
Fibre Channel interconnection – 4 Gb/s. The new technology is now
available, thoroughly tested and offered to enterprise customers.
4 Gb/s Fibre Channel systems are ideally suited for applications that need
to quickly transfer large amounts of data – such as remote replication
across a SAN, database in memory; streaming video on demand; medical
imaging; data mining and data warehousing; and large databases
supporting online transaction processing (OLTP). Additionally, large
increases in online data, such as driven by radio frequency identification
(RFID) applications, will leverage the benefits of 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel
technology.
4 Gb/s Fibre Channel
Storage System
The IBM®
TotalStorage®
DS4800 controller,
features sixth
generation system
technology and offers
the same extensive
capabilities and
functionality as other
IBM DS4000 series
Fibre Channel
systems. These
capabilities include
broad support for
operating systems and
host types; advanced
replication services
such as Snapshot,
remote volume
mirroring and volume
copying.
