Are You Ready to Purchase a Brocade Ethernet Switch ? What ?

One of the more amusing byproducts of the FCoE marketing push, is that Brocade has announced that they will producing FCoE switches for their customers. So, are you ready to buy a Brocade Ethernet switch ? Read more

Article: The Future of Storage - Seven Fundamental Reasons Why FCoE Will Fail

An article I wrote on concerns about FCoE adoption has been posted at The Future of Storage and reviews seven reasons why FCoE might not achieve critical mass in the marketplace.

Feedback appreciated. Is anyone considering using FCoE in real life ?

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iSCSI Network Designs: Part 5 - iSCSI Multipathing, Host Bus Adapters, High Availability and Redundancy

In iSCSI Part 3 - Server Side - iSCSI Host Bus Adapters and IP Performance I looked at how server side issues would affect the traffic generated on a per server basis. I recommended that you use iSCSI HBAs for high intensity servers to meet the high levels of performance.

The next level is evaluate how the server should connect to the network, specifically, this means how many ethernet ports you need, and what configuration is needed to support them to deliver high availability / redundancy and increased bandwidth.

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Don’t Tell Me iSCSI Is Complicated if Fibrechannel Looks Like This

I am working my way through the next couple of articles on iSCSI Network Design. Its getting complicated is some ways. I noticed this article todayhttp://vinf.net/2008/04/09/how-does-an-hp-fibre-channel-virtual-connect-module-work/ explaining how Fibrechannel failover work for a HP Fibrechannel Virtual Connect in a blade server chassis. It is all rather confusing, and seemingly no more complex that the iSCSI network design.

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iSCSI Network Designs: Part 4 - Fibrechannel Integration

Its possible that you would already have some Fibrechannel in your estate. Perhaps the cost of Fibrechannel for some new servers is too much when you calculate the HBA and Fibrechannel switch port costs, or you don’t need the complexity of Fibrechannel for a simple server setup. Lets look at options for connecting to the Fibrechannel nteworks.
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iSCSI Network Designs: Part 3 - Server Side - iSCSI Host Bus Adapters and IP Performance

I have been researching iSCSI impementations on the server to try and understand the dfference between them and to come to grips with how they work. This article looks to compare the various methods of connecting to a iSCSI network.

It seems that many people do not know or understand that the generation and transmission of IP packets is CPU intensive process. In some operating systems, it can also be very latent since there are many transfers across the memory bus and the PCI bus before the data is actually transmitted.

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Network Dictionary - iSCSI

iSCSI - (eye-scuzzee)

- a protocol designed to transport SCSI block data across an IP network thus allowing a single network infrastructure.

- a protocol used by networking teams so they don’t have to understand storage (thanks to Jeff Darcy at Pl.atyp.us)

compare with Fibrechannel

Data Networks - More Reliable to Than Storage Networks ?

I was participating in a storage design discussion and a Storage person threw up their most common complaint about networking - “we don’t know how to build reliable networks”. Let me take a shot at that. Read more

iSCSI Network Designs: Part 2 - Simple Scaling

We have looked at a simple iSCSI network solution in iSCSI Network Designs Part 1. We have kept the storage traffic separated from our data for operational reasons. But we are limited to 1GB/s and the port density of the switch.
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iSCSI Network Designs: Part 1 - Introduction and Basics

I am working on a Data Centre that has more than 500 servers and we are considering what our storage strategy should be. This is why I have been looking at FCoE and iSCSI and establishing the benefits (or not).

My next few posts will be a “stream of consciousness” on possible designs for an iSCSI infrastructure.

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