Fibre Channel Drive Arrays and RAIDs
Fibre Channel is a hard disk drive interface technology designed primarily for high-speed
data throughput for high-capacity storage systems, usually set up as a disk array or RAID.
Fibre Channel disk drive systems typically have performance rivaling or exceeding that of
high-performance SCSI disk arrays.
One of the most common ways of connecting a computer to a Fibre Channel disk drive
system for video capture and output is called a point-to-point connection. A single
computer, equipped with a Fibre Channel PCI card, is connected to a single Fibre
Channel disk drive array. Unlike SCSI systems, Fibre Channel cables can be run
extremely long distances, up to 30 meters using copper cables and 6 miles
(10 kilometers) using optical cables.
For all its advantages, a Fibre Channel disk array requires more setup than the other
storage options previously described, making it unsuitable for portable use. Fibre
Channel disk arrays usually have extremely high capacity (potentially several terabytes
of disk storage). Although this can make them more expensive relative to other storage
solutions, the cost per megabyte is often considerably lower.
Fibre
Channel
card
Computer Disk
array
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Part III
Setting Up Your Editing System