What's a native Fibre Channel and it's benefits?

What's a native Fibre Channel and what's the benefit of using native?

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Native Fibre Channel just means that the device in question does not use SCSI, even internally. Many devices today that have Fibre Channel plugs still use SCSI inside, to get to the actual device. Native Fibre Channel means that the Fibre Channel runs all the way to the device.

The advantage is mostly in performance and simplicity. Since the data is in its native form when it arrives at the device, it need not be converted from one to the other. You gain simplicity because the conversion step can be skipped and simplicity is almost always a good thing in the availability world. Simpler things don't break (or get mismanaged) as often as complex ones do.

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This was first published in December 2002

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