Fibre Channels - What are fibre channel SANs?

Fibre Channel is a complex networking technology that runs on copper cables and also fiber optic cables. Funnily enough, the term 'Fibre' in Fibre Channels is not due to its discovery by any English scientist or lover of Britain. Fibre channels owe their name probably to a desire to distinguish this networking technology from fiber optic cables on which the technology runs .
Fibre Channel technology is a combination of Input/Output networking technology (I-O technology) and gigabit technologies that enables the technology to be used on copper wires and fiber optic cables.
Fibre Channel SANs ( storage area networks) are today the favored storage area network technology and have replaced SCSI SANs all over the world.

Fibre Channel SANs is a great technology that offers backward compatibility in the storage networking space by offering support for copper cables and fiber optics
Fibre Channel SANs have one other key advantage over SCSI SANs - Fibre Channel SAN based technologies support cables until 12000 meters in length compared to just about 25 meters in SCSI SANs.

Fabric topology based Fibre Channel SANs : Fabric Channel SANs use a fibre channel that simulate a LAN switch so that multiple servers access a pool of storage devices
Loop token ring based Fibre Channel SANs : Loop based Fibre Channel SANs are based on token Ring topology framework technologies so that servers can use the fibre channel hub to access multiple storage devices.
Direct one on one (point to point) Fibre Channel SANs : Direct Fibre Channel SANs connect servers directly to a storage device. This storage networking approach is generally not used anymore unless there is a specific need identifed.

Fibre Channels work on a single popular storage networking protocol that offer compatibility to all common storage and database servers.
Fibre Channels use the FCP protocol ( Fibre Channel Protocol) which is simply a serial bus SCSI protocol.
This FCP (Fiber Channel protocol) works really well in networks with a high bandwidth requirement.