Survey on converged data center networks with DCB and FCoE: standards and protocols

Data center networks today face exciting new challenges in supporting cloud computing and other data-intensive applications. In conventional DCNs, different types of traffic are carried by different types of networks, such as Ethernet and Fibre Channel. Typically, Ethernet carries data traffic among servers in LANs, and Fibre Channel connects servers and storages in storage area networks. Due to the existence of multiple networks, the network cost, power consumption, wiring complexity, and management overhead are often high. The concept of a converged DCN is therefore appealing, carrying both types of traffic in a single converged Ethernet. Recent standards have been proposed for unified data center bridging (DCB) Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols by the DCB Task Group of IEEE and the T11 Technical Committee of INCITS. In this article, we give a survey of the standards and protocols on converged DCNs, focusing mainly on their motivations and key functionalities. The technologies are discussed mainly from a practical perspective and may serve as a foundation for future research in this area.