Fibre Channel

From Linux-iSCSI

LIO Target

Fibre Channel fabric module(s)
Original author(s)	Nicholas Bellinger
Developer(s)	RisingTide Systems LLC
Initial release	December 17, 2010 (2010-12-17)
Preview release	4.1.0-rc1 / February 21, 2011; 14 months ago (2011-02-21)
Development status	RC
Written in	C
Operating system	Linux
Type	Fabric module
License	GNU General Public License
Website	risingtidesystems.com

See Target for a complete overview over all fabric modules.

TCM_QLA2xxx running at line rate HW target mode from with PCIe device passthrough with MSI-X polled interrupts across Linux/SCSI qla2xxx LLD request and response rings

TCM v4.0 QLAXXX prototype using PCIe device passthrough for target mode MSI-X interrupts, and QEMU Megasas HBA emulation into Windows7 64-bit guest.

The Fibre Channel (FC) fabric modules provides a driver for various FC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). Fibre Channel is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)–accredited standards committee. Fibre Channel was used primarily in the supercomputer field, but has become the standard connection type for storage area networks (SAN) in enterprise storage. Despite its name, Fibre Channel signaling can run on both twisted pair copper wire and fiber-optic cables.

Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) is a transport protocol (similar to TCP used in IP networks) which predominantly transports SCSI commands over Fibre Channel networks.

Supported HBAs

Fabric modules for the following Fibre Channel HBAs are supported or in development:

• QLogic, status: RC

• Emulex, status: pre-Alpha

Specifications

The following specifications are available as T10 Working Drafts:

• Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP): FCP defines the protocol to be used to transport SCSI commands over the T11 Fibre Channel interface, 12/4/1995
• SCSI Fibre Channel Protocol - 2 (FCP-2): FCP-2 defines the second generation Fibre Channel Protocol to be used to transport SCSI commands over the T11 Fibre Channel interface, 10/23/2002
• Fibre Channel Protocol - 3 (FCP-3): FCP-3 defines the third generation Fibre Channel Protocol to be used to transport SCSI commands over the T11 Fibre Channel interface, 9/13/2005
• Fibre Channel Protocol - 4 (FCP-4): FCP-4 defines the fouth generation Fibre Channel Protocol to be used to transport SCSI commands over the T11 Fibre Channel interface, 11/9/2010

RFCs

• RFC 2625: IP and ARP over Fibre Channel
• RFC 2837: Definitions of Managed Objects for the Fabric Element in Fibre Channel Standard
• RFC 3723: Securing Block Storage Protocols over IP
• RFC 4044: Fibre Channel Management MIB
• RFC 4625: Fibre Channel Routing Information MIB
• RFC 4626: MIB for Fibre Channel's Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) Protocol

Timeline

See also

• RTS OS, targetcli
• Fibre Channel fabric modules: QLogic
• iSCSI, FCoE, InfiniBand, IBM vSCSI, tcm_loop
• Target

External links

• Fibre Channel Wikipedia entry
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet Wikipedia entry
• QLogic website
• Emulex website
• T11 home page