As a major component of any major enterprise network, the corporate data center has evolved into an integral and highly complex environment. The data center is now important enough to be a separate strategic focus for Cisco and many other networking companies. The demand is high for skilled personnel in this area. But the objective of this white paper is not to describe the design or operations of the data center.

The protocol utilized to transport data between servers and storage for High Performance Computing (HPC) and to define a Storage Area Network (SAN) is Fibre Channel (FC). Fibre Channel is an "invisible" protocol, because it is only known to the technicians that implement it and keep it working. This whitepaper will provide an overview of this technology.