What about iSCSI HBAs?

So the Storage writers in the Green Bay lab have been conducting ongoing testing and conversations about one basic premise of the iSCSI world: That you need an HBA in your servers.

We've come to the conclusion that this is not necessarily true, now we're trying to determine the parameters around when it is true. That's where you come in. Tell me what you think. Our testing and discussion leads us to believe that you should be fine without one if your CPU utilization is under 30%, and may be good to go if your CPU utilization is under 50 or even 60 percent.

But we want to hear from you if you have tried this in your environment - whether all is going well for you, or you had to buy HBAs (or TOEs for that matter) to keep your server out of Mega-Swap mode.

At the heart of the question is: How much of this is vendor FUD, and how much is real? When we have a handle on the parameters, I'll post it right back here for you. Until then, have an absolutely marvelous day.