Comments on: Dell prepares for converged networks, FCoE and iSCSI http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/dell-prepares-for-converged-networks-fcoe-and-iscsi/ A SearchStorage.com blog. Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:43:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: davidg@dell http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/dell-prepares-for-converged-networks-fcoe-and-iscsi/#comment-7309 davidg@dell Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:56:37 +0000 http://storage.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/10/24/dell-says-fcoe-is-the-future-plans-for-equallogic-unclear/#comment-7309 Hi Beth - thanks for joining the conversation today. Just wanted to clarify one thing. The discussion was around protocols and technology that are coming down the pike. EqualLogic is most certainly iSCSI and we were merely trying to say that we have some flexibility in the future regarding the architecture of EqualLogic products. What we definitely were NOT saying is that we are any less committed to EqualLogic. We’re proud to have them as part of the Dell storage portfolio. If your readers would be interested in more discussion on the FCoE and iSCSI topic, we have a recent post here (http://direct2dell.com/insideit/archive/2008/10/24/what-s-the-protocol-here.aspx) Hi Beth - thanks for joining the conversation today. Just wanted to clarify one thing. The discussion was around protocols and technology that are coming down the pike. EqualLogic is most certainly iSCSI and we were merely trying to say that we have some flexibility in the future regarding the architecture of EqualLogic products. What we definitely were NOT saying is that we are any less committed to EqualLogic. We’re proud to have them as part of the Dell storage portfolio. If your readers would be interested in more discussion on the FCoE and iSCSI topic, we have a recent post here  <a href="http://direct2dell.com/insideit/archive/2008/10/24/what-s-the-protocol-here.aspx" title="http://direct2dell.com/insideit/archive/2008/10/24/what-s-the-protocol-here.aspx" target="_blank">http://direct2dell.com/insideit/archive/…</a>)

]]> By: Steven Schwartz http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/dell-prepares-for-converged-networks-fcoe-and-iscsi/#comment-7308 Steven Schwartz Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:50:44 +0000 http://storage.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/10/24/dell-says-fcoe-is-the-future-plans-for-equallogic-unclear/#comment-7308 "While traditional Fibre Channel offers better performance for business applications than traditional iSCSI, it also offers better performance for streaming applications and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, Asthana pointed out. But he also projected scale-out iSCSI, especially with 10 GbE, will surpass the performance offered by both earlier protocols." I'm not sure if you were excluding PS-Series here from "traditional" iSCSI, since it wasn't clear, but the reality is, iSCSI can offer equal to performance of Fibre Channel for most workloads. It is only on very large block size IO that FC offers better performance. This is seen in streaming HD video applications. Also, recently, IB has owned the HPC world, not Fibre Channel, and still to this day, NAS based products offer the best storage performance for HPC, via clustered/parallel file system solutions. Lustre, GPFS, PVFS2...etc. are the leading storage access points, the back end storage protocol behind storage nodes is not relevant, both iSCSI and FC are being used today, as well as DAS for that matter. I would love to hear about a 10,000 node HPC cluster where the nodes are attached via FC. “While traditional Fibre Channel offers better performance for business applications than traditional iSCSI, it also offers better performance for streaming applications and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, Asthana pointed out. But he also projected scale-out iSCSI, especially with 10 GbE, will surpass the performance offered by both earlier protocols.”

I’m not sure if you were excluding PS-Series here from “traditional” iSCSI, since it wasn’t clear, but the reality is, iSCSI can offer equal to performance of Fibre Channel for most workloads. It is only on very large block size IO that FC offers better performance. This is seen in streaming HD video applications.

Also, recently, IB has owned the HPC world, not Fibre Channel, and still to this day, NAS based products offer the best storage performance for HPC, via clustered/parallel file system solutions.

Lustre, GPFS, PVFS2…etc. are the leading storage access points, the back end storage protocol behind storage nodes is not relevant, both iSCSI and FC are being used today, as well as DAS for that matter.

I would love to hear about a 10,000 node HPC cluster where the nodes are attached via FC.

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