Today, when disks are connected to a server, they can either be connected internally, or through a SAN (Storage Area Network). SANs use one of two technologies:
The FC SAN uses dedicated fibre-optic cables to connect a SAN storage box to a server. The iSCSI SAN uses TCP/IP to communicate, therefore a server can connect to an iSCSI SAN storage box over Ethernet, using TCP/IP. (For performance reasons, it is strongly advised that you keep a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet segment separately reserved for your iSCSI SAN.)
The two documents attached here give some basic idea about iSCSI SAN storage. Wikipedia is also a great place to start reading more about all these things.
If you wish to know more about SANs, iSCSI, FC, ATAoE, or other such technology areas, post comments below, and we'll try to answer as best as we can.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| dell-iscsi-san-basics.pdf [1] | 753.13 KB |
| dell-iscsi-san-emergence.pdf [2] | 1.46 MB |
Links:
[1] http://intranet.merceworld.com/system/files/dell-iscsi-san-basics.pdf
[2] http://intranet.merceworld.com/system/files/dell-iscsi-san-emergence.pdf