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Strategic Info Management: iSCSI Vs. Fibre Channel

 
 

Ladies and gentleman, we're in for a classic slugfest. Traditional SAN vendors-- including EMC--are putting iSCSI interfaces on their midrange arrays, and iSCSI players are introducing higher performance systems, like the EqualLogic PS3000, that use SAS (serial-attached SCSI) back ends. Will these and other innovations be enough to break Fibre Channel's stranglehold on the big-enterprise SAN market?

We don't expect iSCSI to K.O. Fiber Channel within the next few years, if for no other reason than that organizations with considerable investments in FC equipment and training aren't going to jump ship just because iSCSI now runs on 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Gartner likewise estimates that disk arrays with iSCSI native host interfaces will

represent just 10 percent of SAN market revenue by 2009.

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