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The archenemy of iSCSI is Fibre Channel, which comes in 1-Gbps and 2-Gbps flavors, but iSCSI's ace is its use of Ethernet and IP. This benefits you in two ways: First, price; Ethernet ports are comparatively inexpensive. Second, Ethernet is well-understood while Fibre Channel requires a significant knowledge investment. Another plus for iSCSI is its ability to connect via WAN links. Your application's latency sensitivity will affect how big (that is, expensive) a pipe you'll need, but keeping your SAN safely tucked away in your data center while servicing remote locations is a big draw.

Of course, there's a reason Fibre Channel has been holding off iSCSI--raw speed. With a top end twice that of current Ethernet/iSCSI, shops with heavy storage loads will likely stick with Fibre Channel for now.

However, we do expect iSCSI to make headway in small, single-purpose SANs that don't require huge throughput. With that in mind, we hammered on the new crop of iSCSI adapters from Adaptec, Alacritech and Intel. All three entries were capable cards--albeit a little rough around the edges--but Adaptec's iSCSI 7211C took the crown thanks to its strong and consistent performance and competitive price.