An analysis of three gigabit networking protocols for storage area networks

Author

Voruganti, Kaladhar ; Sarkar, Prasenjit

Author_Institution

IBM Almaden Res. Center, San Jose, CA, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

36982

Firstpage

259

Lastpage

265

Abstract

SCSI protocol is the protocol of choice for block storage management. Different transport mechanisms such as parallel SCSI, Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Infiniband can be used to transfer SCSI protocol data. Distance and connectivity limitations are the key drawbacks of parallel SCSI. Therefore, Fibre Channel, Infiniband and iSCSI (SCSI over TCP) are competing to emerge as the dominant next generation SCSI transport mechanism. By analyzing the different components of a network protocol, this paper evaluates whether Fibre Channel, Infiniband and iSCSI are (a) suitable for gigabit wire speeds (b) scalable across thousands of interconnected devices and (c) satisfy the needs of storage environments and storage protocols

Keywords

file servers; local area networks; memory protocols; network interfaces; peripheral interfaces; storage management; Fibre Channel; Infiniband; SCSI protocol; block storage management; gigabit networking protocols; iSCSI; interconnected devices; network protocol; parallel SCS; storage area networks; transport mechanisms; Databases; Environmental management; File systems; IP networks; Local area networks; Optical fiber devices; Storage area networks; TCPIP; Transport protocols; Wire;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Performance, Computing, and Communications, 2001. IEEE International Conference on.

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7001-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPCCC.2001.918661

Filename

918661