There are so many advantages to the Fibre Channel (FC) storage system that it is hard to know where to start. Other storage devices are good in one way or another but Fibre Channel storage is robust in every way that is important. Its reliability, cabling, connectivity, and performance are top notch in every respect.
Features include:
- Any size storage from a single FC disk to a massive switched FC SAN
- Full and transparent use of either FC arbitrated loop or switched topology
- Simultaneous recorder and workstation connectivity via separate ports
- Disks are easily removed from chassis for transport or archive
- Transparent single or dual FC operation for 180MB/s or 382MB/s performance
- RAID0 disk groups of any size to match speed and capacity needs
- Enterprise class disks rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF
- Rugged and sealed disk packages for extreme environments
- VORTEX File System optimized for high-speed real-time recorder needs.
Reliability: Fibre Channel disks are enterprise class disks designed to operate over a broader temperature range operating 24-hours/day, 365-days/year with a published MTBF of 1.4 million hours. This compares to ATA or IDE personal class storage devices used by other recording system that have a lower temperature range operating only 8-hours/day, 300 days/year with a published MTBF of only 600K hours. FC disks are the most reliable disk storage available today.
Cabling: The cabling of FC disks is very superior. The FC cable is lightweight and can operate over a distance of 1000 feet. Compare that with SCSI parallel cable that is bulky and can only go a few feet. FC allows the storage to be local in the chassis or remotely as the situation requires. In addition, the FC arbitrated loop allows over 100 drives to be easily attached to a single FC port. That is well beyond the capabilities of parallel disk systems that must basically be in the same chassis with the recorder hardware.
Connectivity: The connectivity of Fibre Channel disks is very superior. Each FC disk is dual ported with independent disk controllers and both ports can be simultaneously used. This allows the recorder system to utilize one port while the analysis system accesses the data on the other. And because the number of drives on FC ports is large, it is very easy to implement a queue of disk groups allowing analysis to occur on one disk group with no interference to the recorder storing data on a different disk group. It is also possible for many recorders to share a single disk group where limited space is a primary consideration. And finally implementing a FC switched environment allows unlimited flexibility in the size and number of connected storage devices, recorders, playback units operating simultaneously with display and analysis workstations.
Performance: The performance of Fibre Channel disks is outstanding. Each disk can be up to 300GB capacity and delivers 50MB/s of performance on the inner most tracks of drive. Striping four disks matches the 200MB/s FC performance per port and striping across the dual FC interface of the VORTEX recording engines provides 400MB/s of raw disk performance per recording engine.