Transitioning from 2 Gb/s to 4 Gb/s
According to a 2003 IDC report, 2 Gb/s Fibre Channel accounted for only six percent of
the market in 2001, but by the end of 2002 2 Gb/s represented 70 percent of the market.
IDC also predicted that by December 2003, 1 Gb/s technology would no longer be sold.
The transition from 1 Gb/s to 2 Gb/s was simple and fast because it offered backward
compatibility, no infrastructure change, and pricing was equal. The adoption of 4 Gb/s
technology may follow a similar pattern, and offer backward compatibility, no
infrastructure changes, and equal pricing. Since the industry has made this type of
transition before, the transition to 4 Gb/s may be even faster. Four Gigabit per second
Fibre Channel may be the dominant host interconnection for storage systems by
December 2006.
Deciding when to upgrade to 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel
Deciding when to upgrade your infrastructure involves many factors. Customers need to
evaluate if their current IT environment is stable, performing adequately and if growth
has stabilized. If the answer to these questions is yes, then an infrastructure upgrade is
probably not needed immediately.
However, those customers who answered “no” will probably want to consider 4 Gb/s
technology when determining if the current rate of growth will overtake the current
infrastructure, if new applications and solutions require higher performance levels and if
bottlenecks in the current storage environment are preventing realization storage network
potential.
Customers must also evaluate future purchases of host bus adapters (HBAs), servers, and
storage devices in the SAN that will inevitably be based on 4 Gb/s technology. While
these offerings will likely be backwards compatible, in order for the SAN infrastructure
to meet its full potential and optimize performance, the full data path should be based on
4 Gb/s Fibre Channel technology.
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