Executive Summary:
Many high-performance, low-cost iSCSI SAN products are now available for small-to-midsized businesses. iSCSI SANs provide consolidated storage for multiple servers and benefit from the Ethernet and iSCSI protocols.
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Over the past few years, network storage product
prices have dropped dramatically as performance
and storage drive capacities have increased. Part
of this growth is attributed to the continued success of the
iSCSI storage protocol, which has been making inroads in
the network storage market. According to IDC, the iSCSI
SAN market is projected to top $5 billion by 2010.
Several factors are driving the growth in the adoption of
iSCSI SANs, ranging from increased use of virtualization in
the data center to a greater reliance on data-driven business
environments that employ storage-hungry applications
such as business intelligence (BI) and massive database
applications. Hardware costs have also plummeted over the
last few years, making enormous amounts of disk storage
available for a fraction of what they formerly cost.
Because of those factors, a flood of high-performance,
low-cost iSCSI SAN products are now available for smallto-
midsized businesses (SMBs). Our buyer’s guide can
help you choose the right iSCSI SAN for your organization.
Affordability is an important factor for SMBs, so none of the
products listed in this buyer’s guide exceeds $15,000.
Why Implement an iSCSI SAN?
What are the benefits of moving from DAS to an iSCSI SAN?
DAS tends to be more difficult to manage as your IT infrastructure
grows because it requires that local storage for
each server be administered separately. DAS also doesn’t
allow for common storage in a heterogeneous infrastructure,
such as in environments that might have clients running
Mac OS X or Linux in addition to Windows.
Until just a few years ago, the only way to realize the
benefits of a SAN was to purchase a Fibre-Channel (FC)
SAN. However, the high implementation and support costs
of FC SANs kept most SMBs from implementing them. That
all changed with the introduction of iSCSI SANs.
Like FC SANs, iSCSI SANs consolidate storage for multiple
servers into one manageable resource. iSCSI SANs
benefit from the simplicity and ubiquity of the Ethernet and
iSCSI protocols, as well as the continuing drop in fixed-disk
prices. When combined with network storage applications,
such as Windows Storage Server 2003, iSCSI SANs emerge
as viable network storage solutions for nearly all SMBs.
Things to Keep in Mind When
Purchasing an iSCSI SAN
According to Joel Reich, general manager of NetApp’s
SAN/iSAN business unit, purchasing an iSCSI SAN can be
a straightforward process if you’re armed with the correct
information. It’s important to do some extensive research to
find a solution to meet your storage needs and important to
decide how your iSCSI SAN will be deployed.
Cover as much of your organization as possible. When
it comes to buying storage, Reich suggests that you try to
find an iSCSI SAN that will cover as much of your infrastructure
as possible. Remember, only the parts of your
infrastructure that have access to your iSCSI SAN will realize
the benefits of having a speedy, redundant SAN.
Shop for scalability. Although buying adequate amounts
of storage for your current situation is important, Reich
explains that you don’t necessarily need to follow the conventional
wisdom that advises administrators to “buy as
much storage as you can afford.” Choosing an iSCSI SAN
that’s scalable enough to respond to the growing needs of
your business is a better approach, according to Reich. “The
system you choose should allow you to easily add capacity
and performance over time. Not all businesses have million-
dollar IT budgets … it’s important to have a system that
allows you to pay as you grow.”
Leverage your Microsoft investment. Reich says that
Microsoft has helped drive the adoption of SAN storage
options, including iSCSI SANs, with applications such as
SQL Server and Exchange that use block storage protocols.
iSCSI is a block storage protocol, but NAS doesn’t support
block storage. Given the proven interoperability between
Windows applications and iSCSI, Reich says that businesses
running many Windows applications will find iSCSI SAN
storage to work well with their existing infrastructure.
Buy for the Future
Choosing and deploying an iSCSI SAN that can easily be
expanded to accommodate your future needs and requirements
is important. For example, is reducing power consumption
(and related energy costs) a growing concern
for your business? If so, choose an iSCSI SAN with a largecapacity
drive, which tends to provide a more efficient
watts-per-terabyte power-consumption ratio. If network performance
is important, look for an iSCSI SAN that includes
support for the upcoming (and much faster) 10Gbps Ethernet
standard. And if the ability to easily add storage in the future
is at the top of your must-have list, be sure to look for an iSCSI
SAN that lets you easily hot-add and hot-swap new disk storage.
When armed with the right information and the best
iSCSI SAN for your specific environment, you can enjoy the
affordable benefits of NAS storage for years to come.
See Associated Figure
End of Article
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