HP Takes iSCSI Baby Step

Call it antihype: Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) is doing its very best to not kick up a fuss over the introduction of its first iSCSI-based product.

The company is understandably being cautious about how it introduces products in this area, after the high expectations for storage-over-IP failed to amount to much -- which was partly HP's fault. Check this ber July 2001 announcement touting iSCSI from a year ago (see iSCSI in Exile).

HP's current IP storage strategy can best be described as "tactical." At HP's ENSA@Work customer and partner conference in Amsterdam this week, the company demonstrated an HP ProLiant BL10e blade server attaching to a SAN via an iSCSI-to-Fibre Channel bridge (see HP Outlines Virtualization Plans).

"This is the first IP storage product that we believe will be useful in the marketplace," says Mark Nagaitis, director of product marketing for HP's Infrastructure and NAS Division.

The idea is that the IP-to-FC bridge will connect "stranded servers" -- for which it's too costly or inconvenient to put in a Fibre Channel host bus adapter -- to an existing Fibre Channel SAN. HP officials say the product will be available to customers in the first half of 2003.Sources tell us that HP will be rebranding the Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) SN 5420 iSCSI-to-FC bridge, though neither company will confirm it. The 5420 provides one FC port and one Gigabit Ethernet port; originally, Cisco's list price for the device was $27,000 [ed. note: betcha you can get it cheaper these days]. (See HP to OEM Cisco's iSCSI Router and NuSpeed Duo Departs Cisco.)

Because Fibre Channel rules the SAN roost today, of greater interest than the IP-to-FC bridge to HP -- and its customers -- will be Cisco's MDS 9000 series of FC switches, which HP expects to qualify and start offering by midyear. Sources say HP was also demonstrating the MDS 9216 director-class switch at the customer event this week in Amsterdam (see HP Refills Its SAN Flask).

Note that Cisco is building iSCSI-extension cards that will slot directly into its switches, and that Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and McData Corp.