fibre channel

1 definition found

fibre channel - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Fibre Channel
  
     <storage, networking, communications> An ANSI standard
     originally intended for high-speed SANs connecting
     servers, disc arrays, and backup devices, also later
     adapted to form the physical layer of Gigabit Ethernet.
  
     Development work on Fibre channel started in 1988 and it was
     approved by the ANSI standards committee in 1994, running at
     100Mb/s.  More recent innovations have seen the speed of Fibre
     Channel SANs increase to 10Gb/s.  Several topologies are
     possible with Fibre Channel, the most popular being a number
     of devices attached to one (or two, for redundancy) central
     Fibre Channel switches, creating a reliable infrastructure
     that allows servers to share storage arrays or tape libraries.
  
     One common use of Fibre Channel SANs is for high availability
     databaseq clusters where two servers are connected to one
     highly reliable RAID array.  Should one server fail, the
     other server can mount the array itself and continue
     operations with minimal downtime and loss of data.
  
     Other advanced features include the ability to have servers
     and hard drives seperated by hundreds of miles or to rapidly
     mirror data between servers and hard drives, perhaps in
     seperate geographic locations.
  
     Fibre Channel Industry Association (http://fibrechannel.org)
      (FCIA).
  
     (2003-09-27)