Microsoft Targets iSCSI

Posted by Dave Raffo on July 27, 2006

Tags: Infrastructure,  Other

Channel: Data Center, Other

Microsoft and partners are making good on the storage promises that came out of Redmond last spring.

On Friday, Microsoft will make available the fruits of its March acquisition of String Bean Software's intellectual property. (See Microsoft Munches String Bean.) Microsoft has turned String Bean software into the iSCSI Software Target Application Pack, which lets OEMs build systems that support file and block storage while providing snapshots through Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

HP has already announced a system based on the new technology. (See HP Builds SANs for SMBs.)

Also, emBoot today became the first software vendor to take advantage of the support Microsoft pledged in April for a feature called iSCSI software-enabled SAN boot. (See Microsoft Laces IP SAN Boots.)

Booting from SAN is a feature that makes it easy to create multiple servers quickly and easily by copying the boot volume from the SAN array to the servers. It also allows blade servers without disks to be reconfigured from a SAN, rather than from other servers, cutting down the number of disk-based servers required for disaster recovery and provisioning.