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August 22, 2007
iSCSI is coming...
When I teach enterprise-level storage classes, there's usually a snicker at the mention of iSCSI (SCSI-3 over IP networking). The reasons for the snickers is, of course, all of the folks I teach use fibre-channel to transmit data over Storage Area Networking.
Not so fast, I'll say. Even though absolutely nobody I teach messes with iSCSI in a production environment, it's coming. And when Dell gets serious about something, expect a paradigm shift:
Dell will host a major storage product unveiling in September, and we've got our money on an iSCSI storage device the company has been hinting at for months as part of the show.
The Register has learned that Dell is set to unveil a new iSCSI system called MD3000i. The unit will reportedly run on the same physical platform as the MD3000, which is Dell's direct attached SAS device.
Keep in mind that Dell already OEMs the Clariion line from EMC as a fibre-channel solution, but even buying from Dell doesn't lower the overall investment costs of FC storage. Not only do you still have to contend with the costs of a fabric infrastructure, you have to find trained, skilled SAN admins.
And that's the biggie. My 13-year old knows enough about IP networking to hook to a shared printer in my home office and to use ftp. If he sticks with that, in five years, he'll be an 18-year old networking geek, the kind that ISPs hire cheap to do admin work in data centers. Catch is, there aren't a lot off 13-year olds who play with Brocade switches. There's all these experienced network admins whose skills can be upgraded to SAN, but not without cost. SNIA training classes run $3500-5000 per week, not counting expenses. Vendor-sponsored training is at the same level.
iSCSI shifts that dynamic radically. If the front end of the storage subsystem is ethernet rather than fibre channel, a small business' network guys are ready to go.
That means there are opportunities abound for workign with those companies. Their guys may be able to hook the storage to the network, but they still need to understand concepts such as provisioning and business continuity.
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Posted by Edward J. Branley at August 22, 2007 8:26 AM
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