3PAR Utility Storage and iSCSI

iSCSI is a technology which is much cheaper and easier to deploy compared to fibre channel. However, the iSCSI has never attained respectable deployment levels for storage as Fiber channel. That was mainly due to its poor performance vs Fibre. When it came to performance, iSCSI often lagged.

But, iSCSI over 10G Ethernet is expected to change the game altogether. iSCSI over 10G Ethernet will begin to get major levels of deployment within the next few years. Tide is turning for iSCSI with the fibre based technology taking a back seat.

Cost is one of the main factors that attract or repel corporates to a new technology. On the cost front, there is no technology to beat iSCSI. Apart from the cost, ease of supporting an iSCSI infrastructure compared to a fibre channel, is also a driving force. While fibre needs costly components and expensive tech support specialists, iSCSI can be handled relatively easily because it makes use of the ubiquitous Ethernet network.

Trends in the IT infrastructure is by all means towards virtualisation. Virtualisation of servers and even desktops of late, is driving the need for more and more storage. It does not hurt to take the iSCSI route for corporates as long as it serves the purpose and does it cheap.

Even though the support and interest in iSCSI is fast developing, we can not expect the fibre technology to vanish anytime soon. Fibre will remain entrenched in corporate data centres' storage technology, for years to come. However we can expect more and more new entrants into storage infrastructure building as well as many existing data centres, to experiment with iSCSI and iSCSI over 10G as it matures.

3PAR, as part of their main product line-up of Inserv storage servers, makes it easy for its customers to benefit from iSCSI. Inserv products extend support to both Fibre and IP based SANs enabling the customer to make use of both technologies on a case by case basis.

It is a beauty to connect your storage array with the server using a built in gigabit controller instead of requiring to depend upon costly HBAs, its associated drivers, and additional configuration. This improves the speed at which server deployments and storage allotments become possible. iSCSI controllers can be added to 3PAR Inserv storage arrays seamlessly and non disruptively.

While discussing iSCSI, it becomes imperative to discuss TCP offloading too.

"TCP Offload Engine or TOE is a technology used in network interface cards to offload processing of the entire TCP/IP stack to the network controller". It becomes a remarkable way to free the load on the CPU which normally has the responsibility to handle the processing overhead coming from these high speed adapters.

TCP offload is primarily used by high-speed network interfaces, such as gigabit Ethernet and 10 gigabit Ethernet, where processing overhead of the network stack remains a concern.

In a more practical level, TOE refers to the network card itself. iSCSI protocol load the CPUs heavily due to the heavy TCPIP processing. TOE goes a long way in reducing that load.

3PAR's iSCSI utility storage is nicely priced and available for Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and Microsoft Windows. The price includes installation, training, and three years support.

External Links:

3PAR Utility Computing
10 Gigabit Ethernet - Wikipiedia page.

By T. P. Gopinath, Director - e-Business