McData shows off FCIP

McData used the Comdex show in Las Vegas this week to claim a world first in displaying a director-class storage switch running the Fibre Channel Over IP protocol.

The company claimed that the prototype Intrepid Director switch was the first that could carry Fibre Channel, FICON and FCIP on the same hardware.

Fibre Channel over IP, like sister budding technology iSCSI, is an attempt to move storage into the standardised world of the Internet, whilst still retaining the investment made in products built on legacy protocols. FCIP is intended to extend Fibre Channel networking technology to encompass wide area networks, something which the current technology is not suited for.

McData also announced this week that it had signed a deal to extend its reseller relationship with StorageTek, whereby the latter would bundle its storage devices with the former's switches. The switches to be included in StorageTek bundles are the 6064 and 6140 models in the Intrepid 6000 series of director switches, and the 3232 and 4500 models in the Sphereon family of fabric switches.

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