iSCSI Storage Solution

Your IT budget has to stretch to meet all of your company’s technology needs. You want the most cost efficient storage you can find to keep up with your growing data. An IP SAN could be the answer. Within 5 years, iSCSI technology will change the face of how people store their data.

This affordable technology allows users to leverage what they already know about their environment and systems to quickly setup and manage virtualized server environments and other consolidated storage. 

With Dell's storage solutions, it helps us unlock your hidden data center and do more with what you have by consolidating storage using inherently familiar IP SAN technology. More of our customers are installing Dell iSCSI storage solutions because they are far less expensive than traditional storage and can be managed with fewer resources.

Clarifying Common iSCSI Misperceptions

Several common misperceptions have persisted regarding how iSCSI compares to traditional Fibre Channel deployments. With iSCSI becoming an increasingly mainstream technology and large vendors like Dell and EMC offering iSCSI products, these notions are no longer necessarily true.

Performance: The first misperception is that iSCSI cannot provide the performance necessary for enterprise applications. Many key applications have random I/O data patterns, and the performance bottleneck ends up being the time it takes to write and read data from hard disk drives, not the network bandwidth.

Manageability: Another misperception is that iSCSI is more difficult to manage than Fibre Channel. The management applications for iSCSI SANs have become intelligent, wizard based or even self managing removing much of the complexity of day to day activities. Additionally, because iSCSI utilizes standard Ethernet equipment and because many IT staffs are more familiar with Ethernet than Fibre Channel, iSCSI networks are often easier to manage.

Network security: A very common misperception is that iSCSI SANs are not as secure as Fibre Channel SANs. In fact, when logically or physically separated, iSCSI networks are just as secure as Fibre Channel.

iSCSI for Virtualization

iSCSI technology provides compelling price/performance in a simplified architecture while improving manageability in virtualized environments. Specifically, iSCSI offers virtualized environments simplified deployment, comprehensive storage management and data protection functionality, and seamless VM mobility. Dell's iSCSI solutions give our customers the “Storage Direct” advantage – the ability to seamlessly integrate virtualization into an overall, optimized storage environment.