On 01/13/2014 02:29 PM, Prasad Gondi wrote:
Rob
Can we do this over 1GB nic also? could you please provide some details over
which 1GB nics are supported
FCoE typically goes hand-in-hand with "converged networking," which
basically means DCB. The idea being that you split your Ethernet pipe
into different classifications. This allows you to do FCoE on the same
Ethernet link that you're doing other non-storage traffic on. FCoE uses
DCB's PFC (Priority Flow Control) to provide lossless Ethernet to
transmit on. Keep in mind that with iSCSI you have the reliability of
TCP/IP, but with FCoE you don't have that support.
When sending FCoE packets over 1Gb/s you're not going to be using DCB or
PFC, so you'll just be using traditional (pause) flow control. This is
fine as long as you're not doing converged networking. So, as long as
you don't bog down your pipe with other traffic that would that would
cause excessive PAUSE frames, thus impacting your FCoE traffic, I think
you should be fine. I do not think that the impact of converged
networking over 1Gb/s has really been studied much.
DCB and and other FCoE offloads, such as Intel's Direct Data Placement
feature are only implemented in 10Gb/s HW. I am sure this FCoE/DCB
feature availability only being available in 10Gb/s NICs is true for any
vendors selling FCoE/DCB cards. Some vendors may not provide DCB support
or offloads at all.
The industry is focused on 10Gb/s. You can do FCoE on 1Gb/s, but it's
not the norm and nobody is testing it. The way the kernel is coded any
Ethernet adapter should be able to do FCoE.
I am unaware of any 'supported adapters' list and would seriously doubt
that you'd find any 1Gb/s card data sheet even mentioning FCoE/DCB.
Hope this helps,
//Rob
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