The iSCSI protocol uses TCP/IP for its data transfer. Unlike other network storage protocols, such as Fibre Channel (which is the foundation of most SANs), it requires only the simple and ubiquitous Ethernet interface (or any other TCP/IP-capable network) to operate. This enables low-cost centralization of storage without all of the usual expense and incompatibility normally associated with Fibre Channel storage area networks.
Fibre Channel due to the protocol overhead TCP/IP adds to the communication between client and storage. However new techniques like TCP Offload Engine (TOE) help in reducing this overhead. And tests have shown excellent performance of iSCSI SANs, whether TOEs or plain Gigabit Ethernet NICs were used. In fact, in modern high-performance servers, a plain NIC with efficient network driver code can outperform a TOE card because Critics of iSCSI expect worse performance than fewer interrupts and DMA memory transfers are required. Initial iSCSI solutions are based on software stack.
The iSCSI market is growing performance and usability as more organizations manufacturers integrate iSCSI deploy Gigabit and 10 Gigabit networks, local area networks or the Internet and support into their operating systems, iscsi SAN products and storage steadily, and should improve in subsystems.
iSCSI is Internet SCSI data transfers over intranets and to manage storage(Small Computer System Interface), an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities, developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, iSCSI is used to facilitate over long distances. The iSCSI protocol is among the key technologies expected to help bring about rapid development of the storage area network (SAN) market, by increasing (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), the capabilities and performance of storage data transmission. Because of the ubiquity of IP networks, iSCSI can be used to transmit data overand can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.
Open-E iSCSI software reduces risk and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for customers
as they extend their existing storage capacity. Open-E wants to address customer
needs in the low to high end of the server, storage and networking markets with
pre-installed storage software solutions for
iSCSI SAN Storage Area Network standard