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WHITE PAPER
Best Practices For A 4Gb/s Storage Area Network Infrastructure
Keep application data flowing error-free
Many data centers are in the process of moving from 2Gbit/s (2G) Fibre Channel (FC) infrastructures to the new 4Gbit/s (4G) FC standard. The increase in data transfer rates is instantly beneficial from a performance perspective. However, transitioning to 4G creates some real challenges for architects. In particular, the potential for increased data communication error rates that may result in disruption or performance degradation of business critical applications. The physics of highspeed communication creates many new restrictions on crucial physical-layer elements such as optical cabling and optical modules. These restrictions must be understood, addressed and proactively monitored before the full value of 4G can be realized in today?s Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructures.
AS THE DATA RATE INCREASES, SENSITIVITY OF INDUCED JITTER INCREASES
As the speed of Fibre Channel bit rates increase from 1G (1.0625 Gbps) to 2G (2.125 Gbps), now to 4G (4.25 Gbps), and soon to 8G (8.5 Gbps), the ?window? for valid data (called a bit period) decreases proportionally to the speed. As shown in table 1, the bit period for FC at a 1G data rate is 941 picoseconds, whereas it falls to 235 picoseconds at 4G and only 118 picoseconds at 8G. Table 1: Bit Period at FC Data Rates
