• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • Stephen Foskett
      • My Publications
        • Urban Forms in Suburbia: The Rise of the Edge City
      • Storage Magazine Columns
      • Whitepapers
      • Multimedia
      • Speaking Engagements
    • Services
    • Disclosures
  • Categories
    • Apple
    • Ask a Pack Rat
    • Computer History
    • Deals
    • Enterprise storage
    • Events
    • Personal
    • Photography
    • Terabyte home
    • Virtual Storage
  • Guides
    • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • The iPad Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • iPad Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • Toolbox
      • Power Over Ethernet Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder DOS Batch File
    • Linux Logical Volume Manager Walkthrough
  • Calendar

Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

You are here: Home / Everything / Enterprise storage / Interop NYC and The Great Debate: ISCSI Beats Fibre Channel

Interop NYC and The Great Debate: ISCSI Beats Fibre Channel

October 3, 2011 By Stephen 4 Comments

Update
Happily I was able to record both my presentation and The Great Debate with Stu!

Although I’m a long-time Fibre Channel user, and certainly not the sort of person who denies the capabilities of that hallowed storage protocol, is it really necessary anymore? On Thursday, October 6, I’ll be taking up the challenge and debating Stu Miniman on this very topic as part of the Interop Conference and Expo in New York. Knowing my enthusiasm for iSCSI, organizers Mike Fratto and Howard Marks made me the rebel upstart, leaving Stu to defend the tired old lady!

iSCSI is the challenger for long-dominant Fibre Channel protocol SAN

Let me make it perfectly clear ahead of time: I’m actually something of a defender of Fibre Channel myself! I cringe whenever the “superiority” of Ethernet is raised, but this has more to do with the high standards of typical Fibre Channel SAN implementations than any real technical quality. In other words, it’s fairly straightforward to deploy a high-performance, reliable Fibre Channel SAN and fairly difficult to do the same with Ethernet-based protocols.

That said, I see the era of Fibre Channel coming to an end. 8 Gb Fibre Channel is fairly compelling as an upgrade from 4 Gb, but the jury is out when it comes to 16 Gb or even 32 Gb off in the future. By that time, Ethernet SAN will be widely available and supported, and will likely boast 40 Gb or 100 Gb performance to boot. Who is going to adopt a 32 Gb Fibre Channel SAN when Ethernet is three times faster?

But all of this is the future. Today, the battle lines are drawn between 8 Gb Fibre Channel and 1 Gb or 10 Gb iSCSI and NFS. This is the baseline for my Interop debate. I am not arguing about the future of SAN, or even iSCSI versus NFS. Rather, I am arguing that most businesses would be best served by implementing an iSCSI SAN rather than purchasing Fibre Channel today.

I intend to record and stream our Interop debate, perhaps even real-time. Watch this blog for a recording, and follow me on twitter to see if a live stream is available. See you on Thursday!

You might also want to read these other posts...

  • Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From…
  • How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier
  • Liberate Wi-Fi Smart Bulbs and Switches with Tasmota!
  • Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!
  • How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 10 GbE, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Howard Marks, Interop, iSCSI, Mike Fratto, SAN, Stu Miniman

Primary Sidebar

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via email and you will receive my latest blog posts in your inbox. No ads or spam, just the same great content you find on my site!
 New posts (daily)
 Where's Stephen? (weekly)

Download My Book


Download my free e-book:
Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts!

Recent Posts

How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12

February 3, 2022

Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion

January 24, 2022

How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier

January 14, 2022

Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

November 28, 2020

Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply

October 18, 2020

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020

Running Rabbits: More About My Cloud NUCs

September 21, 2020

Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

September 10, 2020

Remove ROM To Use LSI SAS Cards in HPE Servers

August 23, 2020

Test Your Wi-Fi with iPerf for iOS

July 9, 2020

Symbolic Links

    Featured Posts

    10 Mysteries The Lost Finale Definitively Settled

    May 25, 2010

    The Ideal pfSense Platform: Netgate RCC-VE 2440

    September 21, 2015

    Review: Blue Snowball USB Microphone

    March 31, 2010

    My Advice For New Business Travelers: Get The Credit Cards!

    March 20, 2014

    EMC Redefine Possible (TL;DR Edition)

    July 9, 2014

    Are You a Hypervisor Hugger or a Storage Stalwart?

    November 14, 2011

    Co-Processors, GPGPU, and Heterogeneous Computing

    June 26, 2017

    Nimble Storage Rolls Out an All-Flash Array

    February 24, 2016

    VMware’s Hardware Partner Strategy: Heads I Win, Tales You Lose

    February 11, 2013

    The I/O Blender Part 1: Ye Olde Storage I/O Path

    May 23, 2012

    Footer

    Legalese

    Copyright © 2022 · Log in