The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced that it successfully completed the second of three Large Group Test Periods (LGTPs) scheduled for 2001.
This open industry-sponsored “Plugfest” was attended by 28 hardware and software companies involved in the Fibre Channel industry. The FCIA said the purpose of the event was to mature operability among these vendors’ products by bringing together a wide range of people and products, educating vendors on how to execute the SANmark(tm) Qualification test suites and perform interoperability test
tracks. The test tracks included 2Gig operation, Large Fabric
operation, HBA API operation, FC-IP and Ad Hoc testing between vendors.
According to Bill Martin, SANmark Technical Leader, “The FCIA
Established the SANmark Qualified Program to provide the industry with an objective indication of how Fibre Channel products perform against industry standards through the use of published conformance test suites.
“The ultimate objective is to protect our mutual customers’ and end-users’ investment in Fibre Channel technology, while accelerating market adoption and satisfying the continuously growing storage networking demand,” Martin said.
Tom Hammond-Doel, FCIA secretary said, “Fibre Channel networks are
Typically held to a higher standard because of the critical path nature of the components. The SANmark Qualification Program is helping the industry to rapidly approach a level of plug and play that is beyond what is available with other protocols. This is because Fibre Channel solutions have, for several years, delivered 24 x 7 x 365 operation in mission critical Storage Area Networks.”