Microsoft Likes Fibre Channel, Too

PHOENIX -- Storage Networking World -- In a small departure from its party line, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) included Fibre Channel SAN tools in enhancements announced here at the Storage Networking World tradeshow today.

The Fibre Channel tools are part of Microsoft's effort to broaden its support of all types of networked storage -- though iSCSI and NAS still get most of the vendor's attention. Microsoft's announcements at the show include:

So far, Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX), Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), LSI Logic Corp. (NYSE: LSI), and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) have agreed to support Microsoft's new SAN tracing in their drivers. Three of these -- Emulex, LSI, and QLogic -- will demonstrate the Fibre Channel configuration software here at the show.

While Microsoft continues strong support of iSCSI, Microsoft enterprise storage product manager Claude Lorenson says he doesn't see Fibre Channel going away for a long time -- especially in the enterprise (see Microsoft Sparks iSCSI Liftoff).

"The performance advantage Fibre Channel has today will take a while for iSCSI to match, especially with Fibre Channel going to 4 Gbit/s this year," he says. "iSCSI is still at 1 Gbit/s and won't become ubiquitous until [it reaches] 10-GigE. That's not going to happen for a while."

Lorenson acknowledges that Microsoft hasn't been the driving force in Fibre Channel that it has been in iSCSI. "We had some catch-up to do in Fibre Channel, because we didn't foresee Fibre Channel when we developed Windows 2000," he says. "We've taken the leadership position in iSCSI; that hasn't been the case in Fibre Channel."Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch