Interoperability: FC vendors insist that Fibre Channel's superior speeds outweigh its faults. Moreover, they say steady improvements are being made in device interoperability. It's difficult to gauge the veracity of such claims, however.
Following a "plugfest" at the University of New Hampshire in June of last year, more than 100 vendors issued press releases heralding major improvements in interoperability. A few months later, after the Fall Storage Networking World event in Orlando, Fla., the wire services were again cluttered with press releases touting improvements in management and interoperability. In both cases, engineers working behind the scenes in the show labs had very different interoperability stories to tell -- off the record, of course. There's a reason why nearly all FC fabrics deployed today limit their components to the products of a single vendor and its posse.
In contrast, iSCSI will support virtually any hardware that will work with free, standards-based initiator software. No muss, no fuss. This leads us to another key selling point of iSCSI: It's cheap.
Cost Comparisons: Although iSCSI SANs may use specialized HBAs that off-load TCP stack processing from servers to improve performance, such products are not technically necessary. Because iSCSI is a TCP/IP protocol, you can set up an iSCSI SAN with just standard NICs -- and we have. Of course, as Sanrad says in our survey, to optimize performance you may want to use an iSCSI HBA, which is simply a NIC with TCP off-loading and other features that reduce server or storage-array loading from stack processing. Nice to have, but not required.
Moreover, no special support is required from switches to enable iSCSI traffic. While some switch products are appearing in the market with special value-add features, like better traffic management and prioritization for iSCSI traffic, these features are optional -- always a consideration for SMBs.
Discover the benefits of scalable backbone and network services for application and cloud providers.
Network automation is gaining momentum. Here's how you can drive this powerful technology to its full potential.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
