FiberChannel to Ethernet Converters

[BDMcGrew]

Greetings, again!

Has anyone ever had any kind of good luck with FiberChannel to Ethernet converters; maybe something similar to this Perle box (https://www.perle.com/products/gigabit-managed-media-converters.shtml)? I know Perle is a decent company, we use their USB to Serial boxes all the time.

Reason I'm asking is I need to add a tape library into my setup and I've found a refurbished Dell LTO4 auto loader with 2 drives but it's FC. I'm not setup for FC, don't really want the expense of implementing it and all my single-slot servers are full of quad port network cards so I also have no place for an FC card.

Anyone, ever done something like this?

thanks,

 

[depasseg]

I don't have any experience with that, but I don't see how it will work? It's a media converter, not a protocol converter, right? I'm guessing you will still have to somehow handle Fibre Channel. It sounds like it's just using Ethernet as the transport (kinda like FCoE). But maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, I imagine it would have to provide some server, probably iSCSI, on the Ethernet/TCP/IP side. Doable, but careful with what you buy.

 

[BDMcGrew]

Very interesting and thanks for the input. I hadn't thought about that but you're right. Simply plugging a FC device into a switch does not an Ethernet device make. I have a pretty good relationship with the tech guys at Perle so I will check with them tomorrow and see what I can find out.

-b