The arrival of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) makes it possible to consolidate on an Ethernet fabric to meet both storage and local area network needs. However, it also means that you now have two SAN options for use on Ethernet networks: FCoE and iSCSI.

This raises obvious questions about what the differences are and when you should choose one versus the other.

 How FCoE Differs from iSCSI

The FCoE layer replaces the TCP/IP layer used in iSCSI (Figure 1) and also requires the Data Center Bridging (DCB) Ethernet improvements. The DCB working group of the IEEE has extended IEEE 802 standards to satisfy the requirements of different traffic classes on a single network without creating “traffic interference,” that is, without having one class of traffic starve another.

To read more, visit http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/tech-ontap/tot-fcoe-iscsi-0906.html