Deploy an IP SAN as part of a comprehensive storage strategy in order to radically reduce overall storage costs, unify management of all storage systems and enjoy a full-featured fail-safe storage implementation.
Top 10 Reasons to Connect to Your Storage Pool over IP:
Manage your entire storage pool from the switch including virtualization, data replication and more.
No HBAs needed, connect as many servers as you need.
Tier your storage - off-load non-critical applications to an IP SAN.
Increase storage utilization to 90%.
Virtualize your storage pool.
Resize volumes on the fly.
Easily archive or retire data.
Share and control access.
Ensure business continuity with mirroring, snapshots and sync or async local and global data replication.
Performance equal to native FC solutions.
Best Practices for Implementation
If server CPU utilization exceeds 50% during normal workload, 65% peak load, and/or 75% during backup or mirroring operations, then implement an iSCSI ToE NIC.
Assuming a baseline of 50-200 IOPS for a standard business server, a 1GB connection can support 16 servers (supposing that each server is not generating more than 5MB per second of storage traffic).
Non-blocking layer-2/layer-3 Gigabit Ethernet switches for IP Backbones are highly recommended.
A single IP SAN switch can handle well over 100 standard business application servers, assuming all the servers do not simultaneously generate more than 5 megabytes per second and 600 IOPs.
Use cost-correct storage. Because an IP SAN can connect to any type of storage, you can easily construct a SAN with primary, secondary and even tertiary storage for your varying application and performance needs.
