The Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) bandwagon gathered steam last week at Storage Networking World as QLogic, NetApp and EMC introduced products that support the new transport protocol.

NetApp unveiled what it claims are the first FCoE capable storage arrays. The NetApp arrays add FCoE capability as well as support for iSCSI, Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet.

QLogic introduced the 6200 Series storage routers that bridge 10GbE iSCSI to 8Gb Fibre Channel. The QLogic 6200 features a PCI-Express expansion bus on each router blade to support transport protocols such as FCoE Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand, Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) and 16Gb Fibre Channel.

EMC rolled out the EMC Connectrix NEX-5020 FCoE switch, a rebranded Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch that works with QLogic and Emulex Converge Network Adapters.

Further, Ixia unveiled a FCoE test system in partnership with SANBlaze that tests Ethernet, FCoE and SCSI devices.

FCoE allows Fibre Channel traffic to flow over Ethernet networks, while retaining existing and new Fibre Channel management frameworks. Disagreements between Cisco and Brocade over MAC addressing and frame formats have been resolved and the first FCoE Plugfest ran successfully in September. The FCoE transport protocol required modifications to the Ethernet specification to make it a loss-less protocol.

Vendor qualification of FCoE products occurred during the second half of this year and vendors expect product availability in 2010.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.