Print-friendly Version

IP SAN Fundamentals: An Introduction to IP SANs and iSCSI

Updated April 2007

Introduction

Fibre Channel SANs became popular in the late 1990s and are widely used today; however, despite falling prices in recent years, the costs of a Fibre Channel Switch infrastructure and Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, plus training staff in the new skills required to manage a SAN, remain a barrier to entry for many organizations and IT groups. IP-based SANs offer many of the benefits of Fibre Channel SANs, but at a lower cost.

For more details, see the list of contents below.

Download the document as PDF.

For more information, please see the Storage Administration Site on BigAdmin: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/storage/.

Contents

• Introduction: Why Build Storage Area Networks?
• Terminology
• iSCSI Fundamentals
• Internet Storage Name Service
• LUN Masking
• IP SAN Security
• iSCSI Host Bus Adapters
• Booting Over iSCSI
• iSCSI Targets and iSCSI Routers
• Extending IP SANs Over Wide Area Networks
• Positioning IP SANs With NAS and Fibre Channel SANs
• Making a Choice Between an IP SAN or a Fibre Channel SAN
• References

Unless otherwise licensed, code in all technical manuals herein (including articles, FAQs, samples) is provided under this License.