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

1. iSCSI: The New Storage Interconnect on the “Block”? Sean P. Derrington Consultant, Enterprise Storage and Servers Appergy, Inc sean.derrington@appergy.com

2. 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

3. Critical Issues • Ensuring 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

4. Ensuring Execution of Storage Infrastructure Initiatives LAN • 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Delivering Storage Services • Look 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

8. 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

9. Extending SANs beyond the Campus FC • 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 FC iSCSI

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. Heterogeneous Servers Heterogeneous Networks Management Heterogeneous Storage 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

14. 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”

15. 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

16. Thank you! Sean P. Derrington Consultant, Enterprise Storage and Servers Appergy, Inc sean.derrington@appergy.com