can i use a fibre channel network switch for generalized network traffic?

[thisis789]

i found some cheap used 4GBps fibre channel switches on ebay and latly have started saturating my 1gbps switch with my new file server i want to put a few devices on here so they can access the file server much faster while still being able to talk to the rest of my network.

Thanks for your help everyone!

 

[pauls3743]

Fibre channel is basically optical fibre connections. This needs you to upgrade the network connections on your server to fibre optic as well as replacing the network cable with fibre optic cable. Something I don't know is whether you would need to upgrade/get other switches to port the fibre optics back to Ethernet to connect to your other network devices or whether the switches you are looking at natively supports Ethernet.

My advice would be to look at smart switches and link aggregation (multiple ethernet connections between the server and switch bundled to work as a single connection) as a means for increasing bandwidth to/from your file server. This can be done using intel desktop adapters and most, if not all, server adapters.

 

[bill001g]

You will need special board for your computer to use these. You can forget everything you even think you know about networking when you talk fibre channel. Although it can be used for server to server traffic it almost exclusively used to access external disk arrays from a server. In overly simplest way you could think of this as long disk drive cables from your mother boards. It is not used to talk to end user machine even though very technically you can run ip packets over it that is not its purpose. It is generally used to make it easier to share large disk systems between many server. The disk systems generally are optimized to take advantage of the fibre channel architecture.

 

[thisis789]

Fibre channel is basically optical fibre connections. This needs you to upgrade the network connections on your server to fibre optic as well as replacing the network cable with fibre optic cable. Something I don't know is whether you would need to upgrade/get other switches to port the fibre optics back to Ethernet to connect to your other network devices or whether the switches you are looking at natively supports Ethernet.

My advice would be to look at smart switches and link aggregation (multiple ethernet connections between the server and switch bundled to work as a single connection) as a means for increasing bandwidth to/from your file server. This can be done using intel desktop adapters and most, if not all, server adapters.

i know about LACP and manged switches but i cant run more ethernet cable through the house to my desktop on the other side plus from what i have seen managed switches seem very expensive. the prices for the parts i found online were 90$ for the switch itself and about 15$ each for the NICs. i have asked this question on multiple forums and have got no answers. which is pretty strange and now im thinking im just asking a dumb question. im almost to the point of just getting the stuff and trying it out myself! i really don't see why this set up would not work.

here are the parts if you are interested:
switch: brocade silkworm 200e
nic: EMC Emulex LPe11000-E

 

[pauls3743]

I didn't say "managed", I said a smart switch. These are much cheaper than managed switches but still give you control over them through a web interface.

I wasn't suggesting running any more cable to your desktop, you won't get the benefit. I only suggesting it for your server.

You say you can't run any more Ethernet. Were you really planning on ripping it up and replacing it with fibre optic cable? This is what you would need to do to support fibre. Normal cat-5/6 Ethernet cable are the wrong medium for fibre. You're essentially replacing copper with glass.

Having had a quick read of the brocade silkworm switch you're planning on, I have to agree with bill. This is not designed to be the hub of an Ethernet network. It's designed to link up servers to high-end SANs - Storage Array Network (a large array of hard drives). On the other hand, you could get the last piece of the puzzle and go for a SAN as well. 😉

 

[Kewlx25]

I didn't say "managed", I said a smart switch. These are much cheaper than managed switches but still give you control over them through a web interface.

"Smart" typically just means "Limited Management", but it's still managed.