Fibre Channel over Ethernet is coming along with some of the same benefits that have made iSCSI a success.
iSCSI has gained market share over recent years as organisations look for enterprise SAN solutions with a reduced price tag. Now, vendors are announcing a new wave of Fibre Channel products based on a new standard called Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) that, like iSCSI, rides on Ethernet.
While iSCSI is a robust solution, when it comes to throughput and performance, the technology does not compare what can be accomplished with today's Fibre Channel products. iSCSI is completely reliant on TCP/IP to handle transport needs, which introduces processing overhead into the storage equation as discussed here.
With an FCoE infrastructure in place, native Fibre Channel protocols will ride on an Ethernet-based backbone, with the ability to achiev speeds of up to 10 Gbps. Further, FCoE doesn't use TCP/IP; the protocol continues to use native Fibre Channel to communicate, although some modifications have been made in order for Fibre Channel to support Ethernet.
The Ethernet involved isn't the same Ethernet you're using for client and server connectivity; FCoE will rely on what some are calling "Enhanced Ethernet". This means combining disparate cabling from Ethernet, Infiniband and Fibre Channel.
I suspect initially that this technology will be adopted by organisations already versed with FC technology.