4gFC SAN to small 10Gbase-T network, possible?

[ohmnet]

Existing network:
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A Promise Vtrak SAN with 4gb FC connected to a Mac editing bay.
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There are also four other editing bays connected over a 1GB network to a 100TB Synology*DS3612xs*NAS. All cables are already rated Cat 6a and the NAS has a dual 10Gbase-T card installed that is directly connected to a fith editing computer that also has a 10Gbase-T PCIe card.


Wanted:


1. Be able to back up the SAN to the NAS over the network. (right now the SAN is copied to an external drive, then the drive is connected to another computer and transferred over to the NAS at only 1gb.)


2. Have at least three more computers connect at 10GbE to the NAS.*


So far it looks like the only solution I've found so far is getting a*Cisco Nexus 5596T Switch that has ports for both 10Gbase-T and 4gFC as well as support FCOE. It seams strange to have to get a 30 port data center/telco switch when at most we'll be using 8 ports.*
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Is there any other solution that can act as a bridge for the SAN to the NAS with out having to shell out the $$$ for telco class switches?*
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Even if there was just a 4gFC to 10GbE converter would be a great start.
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So any thoughts on how to build this would be great without having to shell out $20k for the Cisco 5596T.
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Thanks in advance

 

[Cooky]

I'm not a SAN expert, so don't quote me on this, but FC and ethernet are two different protocols, and therefore, you can't just transmit FC over regular ethernet network, unless you implement some specialty gear such as Cisco's FCoE on Nexus platforms.

 

[theevilsharpie]

You description is a little bit hard to visualize. Some type of diagram would be helpful.

That being said, an FC SAN will usually have some type of host connected to it, and even if there isn't (?), adding a 4Gb FC HBA to one of your 10GbE hosts is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than adding an FCoE switch and infrastructure. You can use that connected host to re-present the SAN storage to the 10GbE network as a NAS.

 

[cmetz]

+1 theevilsharpie, put a 10GBase-T NIC and 4GB/s FC HBA in one PC, and have it mount both volumes, and it does the actual backing up.

Also consider upgrading to a better SAN and going 10GBase-T all the way. You're spending enough money to be in the right order of magnitude anyway.