As I mentioned in my recent post FCoE – Yet Another Storage Protocol?, FCoE needs to provide three things to be successful- It must provide a feature advantage, it must provide a cost advantage and it must integrate easily with existing storage infrastructure. This post focuses on the second item- The Cost Advantage.

FCoE is a technology designed for servers. It allows a server to use Ethernet for both networking (LAN) and storage (SAN) access. The first cost advantage of FCoE is using Ethernet which uses the existing infrastructure. Unlike iSCSI, the other network based SAN access protocol, FCoE does not require a TCP protocol stack to operate. The lack of a TCP stack reduces complexity and latency. The second cost advantage of FCoE is using a simpler host interface that does not need a TCP stack to access storage. The third cost advantage of FCoE is leveraging existing networking management knowledge and training.

The combination of these three advantages; Ethernet, reduced complexity and leveraging existing management kowledge and training enables FCoE to become a viable competitor for host SAN access.