[geeks] FibreChannel or FDDI

[Dan Sikorski]

On 02/14/2013 09:08 AM, b4 at gewt.net wrote:
> Hello!
>
> At home, i'm currently running VMWare, and i'm using shared disks on a NAS4FREE box via iSCSI over gigE shared with the VMs.
>
> I was wondering what would be faster performance-wise or if I could configure things this way.
>
> I can get some FDDI cards + necessary hardware (PCI) for the two, and I was wondering if that would be slower than iSCSI over gigE or if it'd be equal/faster...I'm leaning towards equal due to less overhead and it being a dedicated network for it.
>
> I also have a couple FibreChannel cards (64-bit/66MHz I think...other systems don't have the full length slots so I know i'd be limited speed-wise there).  Despite the speed decrease due to backwards-compat...would it be equal, faster, or slower than my current setup? If yes, would it be possible to do point-to-point between the two systems and have System2 access disks on System1?
>
> (in actuality, performance isn't too big of a deal, I can handle a performance hit for the types of VMs i'm eunning)
>

Well,
gigE - 1gbit
FC - 1/2/4/8gbit
FDDI - 100mbit

I'd go ahead and rule out FDDI right there based on speed.  It's cool to 
play with, so if that's all your after, go for it, but iSCSI over FDDI 
AFAIK would be at best extremely rare.

Is there a reason you didn't outline the option of adding some gigE 
interfaces?  That would certainly be the easiest option for you and 
eliminate the contention with having iSCSI and guest VM traffic share 
the interface.

Of course, this is the geeks list.  Who cares about bus speed, we want 
to play with the fun stuff!  Go with FC on the storage end. :)  That 
said, looking at NAS4FREE's website (i've never used it myself) i don't 
see FC listed as being supported, and it's an entirely different animal 
than iSCSI over Ethernet.

     -Dan Sikorski