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The relentless growth of data-intensive and network-intensive applications such as digital imaging, multimedia content, broadcast/video (e.g., video-on-demand, IPTV), VoIP/"Triple Play," e-mail, and more complex computing applications continues to drive volumes of enterprise data and network traffic. As growth continues, IT managers are challenged with implementing solutions without interrupting critical business processes.
The combination of Neterion Xframe 10 Gb Ethernet adapters with the String Bean Software WinTarget iSCSI software enables the industry's fastest, most flexible, enterprise-quality and scalable 10 GbE iSCSI SAN solution without compromising ease of installation or management.
Overview
Using WinTarget to add iSCSI-based storage networking to a data center provides a powerful yet easy-to-use solution for addressing many business challenges that can lower productivity, increase costs, and reduce competitiveness or worse, responsiveness to customers. The following are examples of some of the many ways businesses can utilize a 10 GbE iSCSI SAN to generate measurable results:
- Consolidate and centrally manage geographically disperse storage
- Share redundant storage across all servers
- Centralize and reduce times for data backups
- Improve application availability and time to data
- Meet regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley)
While iSCSI storage solutions are applauded for ease of installation and management, a critical success factor for successful deployment for enterprises is availability of end-to-end bandwidth. This is a concern because when the traffic from multiple 1-GbE connected servers is aggregated at the point where it converges at the iSCSI storage server and there is insufficient bandwidth, disk services delivered over the network will be degraded. This degradation can negatively impact critical business services and hence lower organizational productivity. To avoid this degradation and minimize risks to business continuity, the first step is to upgrade the network interface in the WinTarget iSCSI server to a Neterion Xframe 10 GbE adapter. This upgrade to an Xframe 10 GbE adapter eliminates the bottleneck at the storage server created by the aggregation of the 1 GbE links from application servers. A second Xframe adapter can easily be added to the storage server to provide fail-over connectivity, load balancing, or simply for more bandwidth. Using Xframe 10 GbE adapters for the link to the storage servers ensures the smooth and predictable scaling of network bandwidth along with the storage growth.
The final result is a high performance, 10 GbE iSCSI SAN that does not increase complexity, introduce more cabling, or drive up the total cost of ownership. In fact, the increased bandwidth to the storage server increases the overall efficiency of the network because servers are no longer waiting for I/O's to complete. This helps to drive an extension of the return on investment of existing hardware.
Benefits
Other key benefits of deploying a 10 GbE iSCSI SAN with Xframe adapters and WinTarget software are:
- Significantly improved end-to-end 1-GbE bandwidth for all serversThis guarantees a full 1-GbE of network bandwidth capacity between each end-point device (e.g., file or application server) and the iSCSI disk resources.
- Reduced total cost of ownershipThe cost per Gigabit per second on one 10 GbE adapter is significantly less than the total cost of aggregating multiple 1 GbE connections. This does not include the costs associated with managing the aggregated 1 GbE links.
- Reduced installation and configuration complexityBecause iSCSI driven IP traffic loads will change over time based on application requirements, when multiple 1 GbE links are used, continual monitoring and potential reconfiguration of the WinTarget server is necessary to maintain acceptable performance. This is not an issue with a 10 GbE link to the storage server.
- Significant scalability with 10 GbE bandwidth to WinTargetThe 10 GbE link between WinTarget and the end-point network fabric represents significant built-in scalability in the form of capacity. As compared to using multiple 1-GbE NICs where the Law of Diminishing Returns dictates that adding a third 1 GbE adapter will not yield 3 Gb/second of usable bandwidth. And it only gets worse with more adapters.
The advantages to 10 GbE iSCSI are real and immediately recognizable. The ease of management and increased network performance enhance productivity and shorten business cycles. Intensive real-time applications such as video conferencing, video streaming, multi-media content distribution, on-line training sessions, and high-performance clustered computing solutions all demand the highest and most reliable bandwidth on the market.
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