(iSCSI) has taken the storage world by storm. No longer is shared storage a niche enjoyed by only large, wealthy corporations. Internet SCSI is leveling the playing field by making shared storage available at a reasonable cost to anyone. By leveraging the ubiquitous Ethernet networks prevalent in most organizations, IT staff training costs for iSCSI are very low and result in quick, seamless deployments.
Further, operating system vendors are making it easier than ever to get into the iSCSI game by making iSCSI initiator software freely available. iSCSI networks require three components:
An iSCSI target — A target is the actual storage array or volume, depending on how you have things configured.
An iSCSI initiator — An iSCSI initiator is the software component residing on a server or other computer that is installed and configured to connect to an iSCSI target. By using an iSCSI initiator, target-based volumes can be mounted on a server as if they were local volumes and are managed as such.
A gigabit Ethernet network infrastructure — iSCSI requires an IP-based Ethernet network for its transport between systems with initiators (servers) and targets (storage arrays).