Enterprise Storage: iSCSI Meets Heightened Expectations

by John Joseph
November 1, 2006

Today’s enterprise storage managers are responsible for a multi-vendor storage environment that can comprise different systems, companies, and capabilities. Throw in the exponential growth of data from the Web, compliance issues, and content-rich applications, as well as the challenges of incorporating open systems storage, and the importance of staying up-todate on the latest and greatest in storage is vital. Because current mainframe storage technology and tools are welltested and understood, as well as mature and stable, a storage manager’s expectations are that any new storage solutions need to peacefully co-exist in the current storage universe.

As many storage managers know, Fibre Channel has become one of the primary storage solutions with its speed being a key factor in its adoption. But with all the additional data that’s being generated and accessed, storage managers need to be adaptable in evaluating technologies and solutions that can dramatically alter the cost of their storage systems without sacrificing the requirement of being enterprise-ready.

As one of the fastest growing areas in storage, iSCSI, the storage networking protocol, started out promising affordable Storage Area Networks (SANs) for Small and Medium-Size  Businesses (SMBs). Three years ago, the iSCSI standard was ratified, resulting in the first pure-iSCSI product offerings that are easy to use, sophisticated and reliable, enterprise-class networked storage solutions. Fortune 500 companies are incorporating the technology into their primary storage arsenal. iSCS I-based solutions are providing data to strategic applications such as email, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), student information systems, digital media archives and data-intensive geosciences applications for oil and gas exploration, for example.

To assess the impact iSCS I-based solutions have made so far, consider that, in the last two years, the industry has seen complete support for all the major operating systems, a variety of iSCSI Host Bus Adapter (HBA) offerings, multi-pathing solutions, cluster support, SAN boot, enterprise backup integration, and next-generation data services. While storage system vendors evolved these capabilities into Fibre Channel over the years, the interest in and demand for iSCSI-based products has accelerated the process to let storage managers evaluate and prepare for the time that iSCSI, Linux, and IP-attached storage become common on the mainframe.

As a result, serious storage deployments have been built with iSCSI, and the word has spread. Large Fibre Channel SAN systems storage vendors have to balance the capability and speed of their systems with the negatives of their expense and management complexity. Most storage managers ultimately want and need a modular, enterprise-ready storage system that will provide the reliability, performance, and features of Fibre Channel systems, but without the complexity and high cost of ownership.