NetApp unified storage includes iSCSI SAN solutions offering efficiency, interoperability, resiliency, and security.
The NetApp family of unified storage systems delivers best-in-class storage efficiency, enabling you to accelerate your business processes and reduce the overall cost of storing, managing, protecting, and retaining your data. NetApp® unified storage solutions support both file and block protocols—including NFS, CIFS, FC, FCoE, and iSCSI—natively from the same platform.
NetApp iSCSI SAN solutions reduce the cost to acquire and manage storage networks. Features and benefits of NetApp IP SANs with iSCSI include:
Compatibility/Interoperability
- Runs 1Gb/10Gb Ethernet
- iSCSI is flexible enough to run at almost any Ethernet speed, including today's most popular: Gigabit and 10 Gigabit (10GbE). This flexibility lets you standardize on a single network technology and choose the price and performance offerings best suited to your application requirements.
- Uses IP routing
- The iSCSI storage network protocol uses TCP/IP. Although TCP/IP adds some overhead, it boosts flexibility and value in large storage network environments. TCP/IP allows IP routing across long distances without requiring additional gateway hardware—a requirement for iFCP and FCiP.
- Leverages existing infrastructure
- In addition to supporting multiple speeds, iSCSI runs on the same hardware as your existing user network. Leveraging a common technology, Ethernet, simplifies network management and reduces costs associated with single-purpose storage networks and the additional skills and training required to maintain them.
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- Complements existing storage networks
- IP SANs with iSCSI complement existing storage networks by extending the advantages of shared storage to servers that lack access to the SAN. Because iSCSI uses standard Ethernet, little additional work is required to add stranded servers to a shared storage environment.
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Resiliency
- MPIO
- iSCSI supports multipathing to improve network resiliency. Two data paths are available at the host, and also at the target, to provide redundancy in the event of a path failure. Using both data paths also increases bandwidth. NetApp supports all major operating system MPIO technologies and offers a DSM for Windows® environments, which provides additional functionality and performance and can support concurrent visibility to a LUN via iSCSI, FC, or FCoE.
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Security
- Included in the iSCSI specification is a robust set of security features—including Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) and Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)—to help prevent unwanted intrusion or wiretapping of networks.
- CHAP is a security protocol used to enable iSCSI initiators and targets to prove their identity to each other, ensuring that each connection between host and storage is authorized.
- IPsec is a suite of protocols for securing IP traffic by authenticating and encrypting each packet in the data stream.
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V
LAN
- Though not a direct feature of iSCSI, virtual LANs, or VLANs, offer the ability to logically isolate network traffic from each other on the same physical wire, as if each were on a separate physical LAN. This level of isolation improves security and opportunity to tag traffic for more predictable performance.
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