FC or SCSI Ultra3 for optimal SAN scaling and top speeds?

FC or SCSI Ultra3 for optimal SAN scaling and top speeds?

I have to do a Storage Area Network project and I'm not able to find anything about which to use: either full FC-AL or FC-AL/SCSI Ultra3 technologies. My system must be competitive in terms of speed. The cost is important, but less so than the speed. The first system must have "just" 500 GB but I have to upgrade it to 4 TB, then 10 TB and more. What do you think about this problem? Have you got some Internet links to study? Many thanks, Paulo.

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It looks like scalability is a key requirement here, considering the growth you are expecting. In that case, a Fibre Channel SAN solution makes more sense than using SCSI-3. SCSI-3 works very well and costs less to implement originally, but I think the initial savings would be consumed over time by management costs.

However, SCSI-3 has faster performance than FC today. The real question then is if the systems you are using are fast enough to take advantage of SCSI-3, much less the full bandwidth of Fibre Channel. My guess is they probably are not.

This was first published in March 2001