Hosted by

iSCSI: The New Storage Interconnect on the “Block”?

Sean P. DerringtonConsultant, Enterprise Storage and ServersAppergy, Incsean.derrington@appergy.com

Hosted by

State of the Union

Economic melee• Dollars are still tight, how much do I get for $X is still the

mantra

Execution focused• IT organizations are increasing becoming execution

focused as staffing and time are precious

The storage market is seeing significant

innovation and has seen over $1.1B invested

by VCs since July 2002

Hosted by

Critical IssuesEnsuring execution for storage infrastructure

and/or consolidation efforts

Determining technical storage requirements and

delivering storage services

The current and future state of iSCSI and Fibre

Channel (FC) as storage networking interconnects

Determining the value and dependency of storage

Hosted by

Ensuring Execution of Storage Infrastructure Initiatives

Storage Area Networks (SANs)• A SAN is the set of principals of

offloading data and storage traffic from

the application network

• SANs are transport agnostic

• Goal is to create separate and

manageable networks

• TCP/IP and Fibre Channel (FC) are both

network transports working at the SCSI

command or “block” level

Hosted by

Creating a Storage Infrastructure Business eXecution System

Establish business value• Application and storage service levels

• Approximate ROI

Create storage infrastructure design• Storage access, best practices, organizational

structure

Negotiate with storage vendors• Requirements driven RFI and RFP

• Managing multiple vendors delivering solution stack

Hosted by

Determining Technical Storage Requirements

Storage access• SAN, NAS, fixed content

Business continuity and disaster recovery• Satisfying business requirements and ensuring regulatory

compliance

Application recovery• Mean time to recovery and recovery point objective

Monitoring and reporting• Storage resource management, capacity planning, billing, etc.

Administrative apparatus• Roles and responsibilities for storage and storage management

tasks

Hosted by

Delivering Storage ServicesLook to tiered storage• Platinum, gold, silver levels—don’t get too granular

• Examine a variety of access methods (e.g., SAN, NAS, fixed content, DAS)

Maintain application service levels while introducing storage service levels • Monitor efficiency, even if only internally reported

• Begin with performance, availability, time to capacity, functionality, and cost

• Sourcing will be a larger question raised by senior management

Hosted by

The Future of iSCSI and Fibre Channel

Extending SANs beyond the campus

iSCSI directions

FC in the campus

The value in storage

Where’s the intelligence

Hosted by

Extending SANs beyond the Campus

iSCSI and Fibre Channel over

IP (FCIP) will be the two

dominant IP transports for

SCSI block commands

FCIP will be the dominant WAN

bridging transport for both FC

and iSCSI based campus SANs

All others (iFCP, mFCP) will be

niches or slowly pass into

obscurity

FCIP

iSCSI

FC

FC

Hosted by

iSCSI Directions

10/100mbit vs. Gb vs. 10Gb

• Forget about 10Gb for the next 5 years—too expensive

SNICs, TOEs, initiators, and targets

• Low end servers probably won’t need TOEs

• CPU utilization and compatibility throughout the “stack”

will remain a challenge

Enterprise vs. SME

• Could be suitable for both, but iSCSI is not mission critical

• Focus on what problem is being solved with iSCSI

Hosted by

FC: Still Big Man on Campus

FC will remain the dominant storage interconnect for

the majority of data centers

iSCSI may provide connectivity for low-end servers

and will put pricing pressure on FC component (e.g.,

HBA and switch) vendors

Skip 4Gb FC (for the select vendors that adopt it),

stay with 2Gb and wait for 10Gb

Take notice of FC as a host and device interconnect

• ATA will play a critical role as device interconnect

Hosted by

Where’s the Value?

Storage functionality and management are critical components in product/strategy evaluation

Virtualization will continue to be redefined to a broader storage management definition and is only one component of a storage infrastructure

IT organizations must also focus upon sound procurement, infrastructure, and operational disciplines—execution

The “utility data center” model will be fraught will challenges through 2006 and presumes robust server and storage virtualization capabilities

Hosted by

Where’s the Dependency?

Dependency and intelligence will

reside either in the

• Server (e.g., Veritas),

• Network (e.g., Softek, DataCore, IBM),

• Storage subsystem (e.g., EMC, HP, IBM)

Focus on storage management

Policy based storage management

is in its infancy

• There can be only one

HeterogeneousServers

HeterogeneousNetworks

HeterogeneousStorage

Management

Hosted by

Bottom Lines

Storage principles, irrespective of underlying

technologies, are paramount to a robust

storage infrastructure and operations

Discuss with the business, in their terms,

early and often what storage services they

desire and categorize by application

FC will remain the dominant host interconnect

Put iSCSI and FCIP “in their place”

Hosted by

Appergy, Inc Appergy provides clients with a robust method to better

execute on business initiatives.

The Appergy business execution approach reduces time to results by:• eliminating the need for clients to build their own execution structures

(process, rules, and techniques), and

• providing a robust method that reduces execution oversights that cause delays.

The Appergy business execution approach mitigates the risk of business initiative failure, through the elimination of uncertainty, by providing an organized, comprehensive and disciplined business execution approach to which clients can adhere.

www.appergy.com

Hosted by

Thank you!

Sean P. Derrington

Consultant, Enterprise Storage and Servers

Appergy, Inc

sean.derrington@appergy.com