difference between Fiber channel HBA and fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)

NTDEV
1

Can anyone tell me the difference between a Fiber channel HBA and fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)?

I know that you use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN and a fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic) for network…
But both are running on fiber.
I can use iscsi on a normal nic.
can i use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN as a fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)?
Is there a physical difference and/or is the microcode/firmware different and/or the driver?

greetings,
Bas

2

There are definitely microcode and driver differences for Fibre-channel and
fiber NIC’s. The fibre-channel HBA is essentially a SCSI HBA, which in
most instances uses a single initiator model, i.e. the computer initiates
all communications. A fiber NIC is still just an Ethernet controller,
whether fibre or copper, and presents itself as a network controller to the
world.

There is a spec for TCP/IP over fibre-channel but few NIC vendors offer it.

–
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr
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wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> Can anyone tell me the difference between a Fiber channel HBA and fiber
> Gigabit server adapter (nic)?
>
> I know that you use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN and a fiber Gigabit
> server adapter (nic) for network…
> But both are running on fiber.
> I can use iscsi on a normal nic.
> can i use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN as a fiber Gigabit server adapter
> (nic)?
> Is there a physical difference and/or is the microcode/firmware different
> and/or the driver?
>
> greetings,
> Bas
>
>

3

They’re completely different technologies. They use fibre at the electrical layer (though FC can also run over copper, just to be confusing) but do different signaling on that fibre and run different link, transport and protocol layers on top of that.

There is a definition for IP over Fibre Channel, and there’s a definition for SCSI over TCP/IP (iSCSI). But you can’t just plug your IP fibre network into your FC adapter and have it magically work.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@getronics.com
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 8:32 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] difference between Fiber channel HBA and fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)

Can anyone tell me the difference between a Fiber channel HBA and fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)?

I know that you use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN and a fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic) for network…
But both are running on fiber.
I can use iscsi on a normal nic.
can i use a Fiber channel HBA for SAN as a fiber Gigabit server adapter (nic)?
Is there a physical difference and/or is the microcode/firmware different and/or the driver?

greetings,
Bas

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