Design and Implementation of a Fibre Channel Target Driver Supporting SCSI

Abstract

Fibre channel storage area networks (FC-SAN) are effective solutions to address storage management problems caused by very large volumes of data. But the expense of fibre channel devices limits FC-SAN applications. The use of IP networks instead of fibre channel networks will reduce SAN cost, but will also reduce the performance. Therefore, small computer system interface (SCSI) devices were considered to replace FC disks to reduce the SAN cost. A driver for the FC network adapter and the FC target, designed and implemented to support this structure, obeys the SCSI protocol and works in target mode with 200 MB/s bandwidth. The FC target architecture and implementation were compared with the FC initiator. The SCSI command transfer process in the FC layer was described. The performance test results show that the maximum I/O throughput reachs 167 MB/s for read requests and 196 MB/s for write requests (FC bandwidth is 200 MB/s), verifying that the FC target is very efficient. The modularization, efficiency, and low cost of the FC target will enable SAN and fibre channel to be more widely used in applications.