I continue to be amazed by the level of interest I’m seeing in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and 10 Gb Converged Ethernet among storage people. As I noted after my Charlotte virtualization seminar, end users at the largest enterprises seem to think that FCoE is their future, not just one of several options.

But when will 10 Gb and FCoE arrive? Dave Raffo and I discussed the topic after Storage Decisions, and he just wrote an article on the topic, 10GigE still seeking killer app. Here are some points that came up in our discussion:

• Shipping and supported 10 Gb HBAs and CNAs are the key requirement, and it looks like the schedules of Microsoft, VMware, Sun, and Linus Torvalds will determine when the floodgates open
• iSCSI people are talking 10 Gb, too, and they might end up adopting it first with software initiators
• Interest in FCoE is focused at the largest enterprise shops, and I’m seeing a distinct line between “iSCSI shops” and “(future) FCoE shops” with very little overlap (as I previously noted, iSCSI and FCoE aren’t mortal enemies, and FCoE will rule in the largest environments)
• No one is talking about 8 Gb Fibre Channel - they have all decided that 10 Gb FCoE or iSCSI is the next step for block storage
• InfiniBand has its believers (and they are rabid fans!), but the users I talk to are, as a rule, heading toward FCoE rather than IB for their future connectivity
• There is a tiny bit of user interest in moving back to SAS-enabled DAS for virtual server environments
• Everyone I talk to is shocked there isn’t a 10 Gb iSCSI array on the market yet, and we all expect to see this before FCoE
• Although some vendors have announced FCoE products, they’re not here yet - and it will be another year still before we see production deployment

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

There has been a lot of discussion in the storage industry about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), making it the toast of Storage Networking World, but this technology remains relatively unknown to end users. Like so many storage protocols before it, the $10,000 question is whether FCoE will take off like iSCSI or fizzle as a niche product like FCIP, DAFS, and so many others.

If it does succeed, another critical question is what this means for iSCSI, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and to a lesser extent AoE, expanded SAS, and other options for SAN storage. The enterprise data center is poised for a complete change in server connectivity, with 10 Gb Ethernet converged network adapters (CNAs) and new core switches carrying both network and storage traffic, and this holds promise, especially in virtualized environments. But CNAs do not equal FCoE, and iSCSI, conventional Fibre Channel, and other protocols are roaring ahead. What impact will FCoE really have?

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This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

I am not the typical enterprise storage user. In fact, I am not an enterprise storage user at all - I am a consultant focused for over a decade on assisting enterprises with their storage architecture and strategy, working with businesses of all sizes. My background is both a blessing and a curse - I have seen far more enterprise storage environments in much more detail than most people, but I am unable to truly empathize with my corporate storage compatriots since it’s not really my gear and data that I am working with.

Based on this experience, what does the future hold? Where is enterprise storage heading? Read on for my thoughts.

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As I mentioned on Monday, VMware’s Update 2 for ESX 3.5 includes support for 8 Gb Fibre Channel HBAs. This is an important development, so I went looking through the official ESX I/O Compatibility Guide to see which HBAs in particular were supported, but none were listed.

This was pretty puzzling, but Rich from VM /ETC and Duncan from Yellow Bricks were right - they just hadn’t updated the guide yet (even though the revision date was July 25).

So without further ado, the announcement:  You can now use Emulex and QLogic 8 Gb Fibre Channel HBAs with VMware ESX to give blazing I/O performance right where it’s needed.  Of course, 8 Gb storage arrays remain rare, but this will change soon.

An end-to-end 8 Gb FC SAN will likely provide all the performance of 10 Gb FCoE, and it’s available now instead of 2009 or 2010.  10 Gb iSCSI and NFS are also supported as of Update 2 if you’re more of a TCP/IP person…

VMware just released Update 2 for VMware ESX Server 3.5 (Virtual Infrastructure), and it includes some storage fixes of note:

1. Support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for filesystems Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 guests.  This means VMware services like VCB and SRM can now signal Windows Server to quiesce filesystems before creating a clone or snapshot and is a major addition!
2. Windows Server 2003 guests also get application quiescing, where supported.
3. You can now extend a live, running VMFS volume as storage is added, just like Windows Vista and 2008 guests could already do with raw device mode (RDM).  Note that this only works for flat disks with no persistent snapshots open.

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Beth Pariseau over at SearchStorage.com has another great interview, this time with “Mr. SCSI”, Larry Boucher of Alacritech. Despite being early to market with TCP offload engine (TOE) Ethernet NICs, and iSCSI HBAs in particular, the company has been less successful than many would have expected. This is probably because most folks just didn’t use ‘em - iSCSI works fine with a plain-Jane gigabit NIC on today’s modern computers.

Boucher suspects (as do I) that 10 Gb speed will make TOEs much more critical, and he expects Alacritech to be well positioned to take advantage of this shift.  He sees TOE becoming integrated with future PC chipsets, and not just for storage.  Asked when he expects “the year of 10 gigabit” to come, Boucher estimated 2009.  Sounds reasonable to me!