Show Time for iSCSI

More than 50 vendors will take part in the first public” demonstration of a working IP storage network at the Storage Networking World show in Orlando, Fla., next week.

So top secret is the list of participating companies in this demo that it would have been easier to find out who The Gnomes of Zurich are. That said, the list of participants is supposed to be a Who's Who of IT players -- including IBM Global Services, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO). In addition, all of the major Fibre Channel switch manufacturers, as well as the server vendors and HBA manufacturers, are set to take part.

There have been several private demonstrations already this year by cliques of vendors looking to promote their own technologies (see IP Storage Coast-to-Coast and IP Storage Test Draws Crowd). The aim of the test in Orlando is somewhat different: to bring together all the work done by these various groups in the hope that it all works together.

”It will,” says Joe Gervis, director of product marketing at Alacritech Inc., which makes SAN chips and PCI cards and is participating in the demo (see Alacritech Demos Accelerator). “There’s been a spike in work done on the iSCSI [SCSI over IP] standard since the July plug fest to ensure that there is no more ambiguity in the spec."

Apparently, ambiguous vendors had previously interpreted the log-in process (or how two iSCSI devices initiate communication with each other) differently -- a fairly fundamental problem. This situation has now been rectified, according to Gervis.Piece by piece, iSCSI storage networks are coming together with the promise of enabling storage applications to run over existing IP infrastructures. This could deliver significant cost savings and ease of management, a tempting proposition for budget-stressed IT managers.

Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT) is one company keen to get a slice of iSCSI action. It has unveiled what it says is the first iSCSI Storage Protocol Accelerator (SPA) ASIC to connect servers and storage devices in iSCSI SANs.

Its proprietary protocol acceleration technology offloads TCP/IP and iSCSI protocol processing from the host to reduce CPU utilization and free-up system resources. This is said to be critical to the widespread adoption of iSCSI (see Silverback Emerges From the Mist).

Tape library firm Advanced Digital Information Corporation (NASDAQ: ADIC) is the first to integrate Adaptec's SPA ASIC into its storage appliances. The companies claim this is the first announcement of an ASIC-based iSCSI implementation for a storage device (see ADIC Adapts to Adaptec).

Despite all the demos and announcements, iSCSI still has a way to go yet. The official specification is still months away from final approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and there is likely to be more tweaking after the demo in Orlando.Then there’s the issue of the major storage vendors not really embracing it yet. IBM is the only vendor with a storage array that natively supports iSCSI. Dell Computer Corp's (Nasdaq: DELL) PowerVault and Hitachi Data Systems's 9910 storage systems can connect to it, but only via Fibre Channel. And no word from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) on the iSCSI front yet, though they may have other things to worry about right now (see EMC Bombs Big-Time).

— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch http://www.byteandswitch.com