Can I use Emulex fibre channel ports to set up a network between my servers?

Question

I recently got my hands on a couple of old Fujitsu servers, all of which contain two PCIe fibre channel cards (Emulex ones). I also own a fibre channel switch. Is it possible to use the FC ports as networking interfaces to communicate via TCP/UDP or is FC solely intended for the SCSI protocol?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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Practically, probably not. Some drivers did support IPFC on a couple different operating systems, but its probably not maintained. Even a few years ago this was dreadfully obscure, see: How do I set up IP over FC?

In theory IP over a fancy lossless network with multipathing is nice. It can work, but the complexity just isn't worth it for many use cases. Commodity Ethernet is cheaper.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:14

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answered May 01 '16 at 01:12

John Mahowald

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Thank you for your answer and the link. I think I will stick to ethernet. – janoliver May 01 '16 at 20:11

Can I use Emulex fibre channel ports to set up a network between my servers?

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