iSCSI Plug Fest showcases next wave of products
Alan Earls
The first International iSCSI Plug Fest, held at the University of New Hampshire's iSCSI Interoperability Laboratory last month, attracted more than 28 storage networking companies including Agilent, Cisco, Compaq, Eurologic Systems, FalconStor, HP, IBM, and Intel.
The goal of iSCSI is to provide companies with a cost- effective storage networking solution that's easy to install, manage and service -- based, as it is, on ubiquitous PC technology. In particular, the iSCSI protocol enables block-level data to be accessed anywhere within an IP/ Ethernet network.
The testing at the event concentrated on the interoperability and conformance of the iSCSI Specification Draft Versions 0.6 and 0.0, Target and Initiator Reference Implementations. The final ratification of the iSCSI protocol standard is due by the end of this year from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
The University of New Hampshire's iSCSI Interoperability Laboratory provided the facilities, services and procedures that allowed a quantitative assessment of the ability for devices or components to properly participate in multi- vendor iSCSI networks.
John Webster, an analyst at Illuminata, Inc., based in nearby Nashua, says the Plug Fest was an important step toward launching iSCSI into the market. As an example, he cites the large number of products demonstrated -- about 40. Webster says about half were software stack implementations on the host and some host bus adapters (HBA). Another half of the products were arrays, including 19 disk arrays. "With that many offerings at this stage, it is clear that once the standard is actually blessed there will be a huge flow of products," he said.
Additional Resources:
- Check out more about the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab and its 17 different consortiums.
- What do you think about the latest iSCSI interoperability efforts? Sound off in our forum.
- Ask one of our Storage Networking experts about their thoughts on iSCSI and interoperability.
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About the author: Alan Earls is a freelance writer in Franklin, MA.
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