Overview; Fibre Channel Over Ethernet; Chapter - Cisco Nexus 5500 Series Configuration Manual

Overview

This chapter contains the following sections:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Fibre Channel over Ethernet

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) allows Fibre Channel traffic to be encapsulated over a physical Ethernet
link. FCoE frames use a unique EtherType so that FCoE traffic and standard Ethernet traffic can be carried
on the same link.
Classic Ethernet is a best-effort protocol; in the event of congestion, Ethernet will discard packets, relying on
higher level protocols to provide retransmission and other reliability mechanisms. Fibre Channel traffic requires
a lossless transport layer; as a data storage protocol, it is unacceptable to lose a single data packet. Native
Fibre Channel implements a lossless service at the transport layer using a buffer-to-buffer credit system.
OL-30890-01
Fibre Channel over Ethernet, page 3
Data Center I/O Consolidation, page 4
Virtual Interfaces, page 5
Ethernet Switching, page 5
FCoE and Fibre Channel Switching, page 5
QoS , page 6
Virtual Port Channels, page 6
Serviceability, page 6
Switch Management, page 7
Network Security Features, page 8
Virtual Device Contexts , page 8
Licensing, page 8
Typical Deployment Topologies, page 8
Supported Standards, page 11
Cisco Nexus 5500 Series NX-OS Fundamentals Configuration Guide, Release 7.x
2
C H A P T E R
3