The recent maturity of products for the iSCSI market has provided IT channel professionals with the option of offering their customers more than one flavor of storage area network (SAN). So how should you decide if Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI is right for your customers?
Fibre Channel background
Fibre Channel was developed in the late 1980s and ratified as an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard in 1994. It is now a mature technology that provides a high-performance, high-speed switched storage network using dedicated host, switch and storage hardware. Fibre Channel SANs were introduced to improve connectivity between storage and hosts, consolidate storage systems and improve performance.
iSCSI background
iSCSI, only ratified in 2003 by the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF), is a low cost IP-based protocol for connecting storage and hosts using existing or dedicated IP networks. iSCSI was developed to address the need for a more cost-effective alternative to Fibre Channel; IP networking technology is inherently cheaper than Fibre Channel (more later). Both iSCSI and Fibre Channel connect host and storage using the standard SCSI command set and therefore provide block-level access to data.
Determine SAN requirements
Before offering any solution, ask your customer what it is they require.
Match requirements to SA
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N constraints
Once requirements are understood, these should be matched to the constraints of each technology type.
Choose a SAN solution
It isn't possible to say exactly which SAN type will meet each customer requirements as needs will differ subtly from customer to customer. However, here are a few general guidelines to make the decision easier.
Consider choosing Fibre Channel over iSCSI for SANs where availability, performance and reliability are paramount. For example, a SAN supporting a mission-critical transaction processing system will be more suited to Fibre Channel.
Consider choosing iSCSI where acceptable compromise and tradeoffs can be made or are required to meet the customers needs. For example, an iSCSI SAN may be suited to the customer who may not be willing to invest in acquiring or training staff to support Fibre Channel.
About the author: Chris M. Evans is an independent storage consultant with Brookend Ltd., with nearly 20 years' experience in a wide range of storage platforms covering mainframe, open systems and Windows. Chris specializes in network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) technologies, designing and implementing large-scale infrastructure projects for major financial corporations. Online, Chris maintains www.storagewiki.com; you can catch up with him on his blog at www.storagegurus.com.
