Microsoft Targets iSCSI

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.Now, emBoot says its winBoot/i software, which is sold through OEMs and integrators, includes code provided by Microsoft that lets Windows Storage Server 2003 and other Windows 2003 servers boot from iSCSI storage over Ethernet adapters.

EmBoot has offered software that booted from iSCSI SANs for more than a year without Microsoft support, which blunted its adoption rate. (See IP SANs Get the 'Boot'.)

It's probably no coincidence that Microsoft's iSCSI moves are taking place as storage vendors push out new SMB products. Besides HP signing up for a Windows-based IP SAN, Network Appliance recently launched a StoreVault SMB system, and EMC says it will expand the low-end AX platform that it co-markets with Dell. (See NetApp Zeroes In on SMBs and EMC Eyes SMB Push.)

Given all this activity, users will need to weigh having a system based on industry-standard hardware and Windows software against those with enterprise features built by traditional storage vendors.

"Microsoft is trying to build an overall environment that works, and you dont have to spend big dollars on software to manage it," says Jeff Cohen, former CIO of JetBlue airlines and presently a consultant to Kingston, N.Y.-based real estate firm Birchez Associates."Software's what kills you," Cohen says. "It's not so much the [price of ] storage. Storage is only priming the pump compared to software and maintenance."

In this vein, HP touts having management software built into its SMB system as a major selling point for customers that don’t want to spend more than $10,000 on storage.

Not everybody wants to let Windows manage its storage systems, though. Despite price differences, Cohen says he's not yet sold on iSCSI over Fibre Channel. And Chuck Edwards, president of managed service provider Blue Gecko, says he was among the early StoreVault adopters partly because he likes that it is built on NetApp's enterprise Data Ontap operating system.

"If I want a Windows server, I can build one myself," Edwards says. "I wanted an enterprise system."

—Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch