Can I hook up a NAS via Fibre Channel?

Sounds like you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

First off, look at what the acronyms stand for - NAS = Network Attached Storage. The whole point of a NAS is that the volumes are accessed over a network - typically ethernet. Therefore if you're building a NAS you only need an ethernet network between the server and the client(s). You've spent additional money on a fiber channel switch and cards that you don't need.

Fiber channel is typically used in a SAN - Storage Area Network. This is where clients communicate with the SAN server over a dedicated storage link. Off hand I have no idea whether your Linux server can be configured as a SAN host - it usually takes a specific SAN controller to do what you describe. There may be software solutions around that will do what you want but I'm not aware of them

[Storage Area Network (SAN)|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage areanetwork] connections use storage protocols and media and controllers with lower bit error rates, and not IP networking. The usual SAN connection uses Fibre Channel (FC) connections.

These FC SAN connections operate akin to, say, SCSI or USB or such connections to SCSI or USB devices; FC and SCSI (and USB) are related protocols, and these tend to run directly on the buses.

This is also why you're seeing references to device-level storage access.

[Network Attached Storage (NAS)|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network attachedstorage] accesses remote storage over lower-cost and higher error-rate network connections and uses network protocols (and typically over IP). Remote servers can serve up files via SMB/Samba/CIFS or other such.

Most folks tend to use gigabit Ethernet and NAS or (in a few cases) 10 GbE and NAS.

NAS uses lower-quality connections with higher error rates, and these errors are managed through the networking software. SAN uses higher-quality connections with lower error rates, and gains in speed and in costs.

I've encountered rather fewer home-grown SAN controllers; SAN storage controllers could certainly be built, but they tend to be purchased. And a Mac Mini or Time Capsule (possibly with a RAID array hanging out the back) can be a NAS controller, for instance.

You will need to decide if you're building NAS or SAN here, and NAS is probably a better (first) project.

Is what you want technically possible? Probably.

In an earlier era, you could have a network or an image scanner or other devices connected to a host via SCSI; via a storage bus. There was all manner of odd SCSI-connected gear. (Think of SCSI as expensive multi-host USB with big expensive cables and with expensive peripheral devices, and you'll have the general idea. And FWIW, SCSI is the underpinnings of USB.)

You would end up writing a whole lot of driver code for the devices and hosts you have, too.

Which is where folks end up with commercial SAN solutions, or with NAS solutions, and not with using a SAN as a network.

The various Fibre Channel controller vendors discussed but never seemed to have sorted out the network interface designs for their FC controllers.

If you want to roll your own storage arrays akin to the [Apple Xsan|http://www.apple.com/xsan> or the HP [MSA|http://h18000.www1.hp.com/storage/disk storage/msa_diskarrays/sanarrays/index.html] or [EVA|http://h18000.www1.hp.com/storage/disk storage/eva_diskarrays/evaarrays/index.html] SAN arrays, well, have at. You'll likely end up needing to write host disk drivers, as well as the firmware within the SAN controller. Networking drivers might be a bit more tricky; I haven't looked at those device interfaces in a while, and you'd need to tie those drivers into the host network stacks. Once you have some or all of that working, then the hosts can see the block storage out on the SAN. If you need sharing, you'll need to sort out a cluster or SAN file system to run atop the block storage or atop the network connection you've built; a file system that can coordinate distributed access.

Possible? Sure. On a budget? Probably not.