What new technologies might be of interest to me (i.e. 10-Gigabit Fibre Channel, Infiniband, iSCSI)?
Simon Gordon: Working at a green field site, you have the happy situation of making a decision based on where we are now. In terms of storage networking, I think we are really looking at Fibre Channel and iSCSI. Most of what I hear is that Infiniband is still mostly inside the server/cluster. iSCSI: I think this will have a big year. With the Microsoft announcements (.NET) and support coming, I think by the middle of this year this will be a serious contendor. There is now wire speed iSCSI capability out there for a number of platforms and operating systems — both HBA and switch. Fibre Channel: Don’t worry about 10Gb, or even 2Gb too much. 10Gb is really pitched at ISLs rather than servers (though I suspect some arrays may also start to use it). As for 4Gb, until recently, most of the talk about this was in back end storage. CLICK for Simon’s recommended protocol. Why are switches used between servers and storage in a SAN environment? How do you choose the best switch? What features s
