Novell Open Enterprise Server

iSCSI

Overview

Your business is growing—and so are your storage needs. If you're looking for something that leverages your existing Ethernet infrastructure and that is easier to manage and much more affordable** than a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN), then Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) for Novell® NetWare® and Novell Open Enterprise Server*** is your perfect avenue for data transmission and storage consolidation.

Simplified Data Migration and Consolidation

As an Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking standard for linking data storage, iSCSI software facilitates data migration over intranets and helps you manage storage. iSCSI solutions include the following:

Direct-attached-storage-to-SAN migration
Site-to-site migration
Distance replication, including disaster recovery and geographic data caching
Serverless backup
Low-cost clusters

Because of the universality of IP networks, iSCSI can be used to transmit data over Local Area Networks (LANs), Wide Area Networks (WANs) or the Internet. Furthermore, it can support up to 32-node server clusters. In essence, iSCSI allows you to build high-availability clustering systems—but at a very low cost.

In addition to transmitting your data, iSCSI also consolidates it—simply and flexibly. Because it is built on the familiar TCP/IP infrastructure, iSCSI lets you easily add storage and then repartition among systems and logical groupings. If one user volume is growing too rapidly, you can allocate storage from another area.

Cost Reduction for SAN Maintenance

While traditional SANs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware, software, management and training, iSCSI on Gigabit Ethernet hardware is a fraction of the cost of a full Fibre Channel SAN solution—up to 10 times less expensive than its Fibre Channel counterpart for the same amount of storage.

iSCSI allows a SAN to be built using the same hardware and management domain used in a traditional LAN; furthermore, it can use the same infrastructure as the LAN or have its own dedicated infrastructure. (Novell recommends that iSCSI be deployed on a dedicated LAN.)

Features

Commodity Ethernet hardware supports standard TCP/IP networks.
LDAP and directory-enabled iSCSI functions enhance disk access control.
Single-point administration through the browser-based NetWare remote manager lets you remotely manage your iSCSI SAN.
Support for Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) authentication verifies initiator identity.
iSCSI draft specification (Ratified Standard Draft 20) is supported.
iSCSI is interoperable with industry-standard iSCSI storage servers or targets, including Cisco, Network Appliance and Adaptec. (See a list of all Novell-certified products at http://developer.novell.com/yespgm/.)
Installation and configuration are simple, especially compared to the complexity involved in installing and configuring a Fibre Channel SAN.

Benefits

Low cost on required hardware
Longer distance storage connectivity
Easy-to-manage SAN solution
Scalability and flexibility
Reduced SAN management training requirements
Increased flexibility in storage management and growth
Ability to create a SAN from existing direct-attached storage servers
No need for administrators to undergo intense new training

Storage Tendencies

SANs are beneficial because they help manage data by consolidating, provisioning and re-provisioning storage and by improving backup and archives. They provide additional functionality in high-availability clustering, which is increasingly used for business continuance. iSCSI SANs offer this—and more. iSCSI is supported on Novell NetWare 5.1 and above and is built into both Novell NetWare 6.5 and Novell Open Enterprise Server.

**Many systems integrators report that it costs nine to ten times less to deploy iSCSI than it does to deploy Fibre Channeleven with the same storage amount.

***Note: The initiator for the Novell NetWare kernel is included in Novell NetWare 6.5 (and therefore within Novell Open Enterprise Server). It is also available by download for Novell NetWare 5.1 and 6.0. An open source initiator, which is not LDAP-enabled, is included in SUSE® LINUX Enterprise Server 9 and therefore in the Linux kernel of Novell Open Enterprise Server.

A Novell NetWare target allows a machine to act as a disk server or a storage array and is available in Novell NetWare 6.5 and in the Novell Open Enterprise Server NetWare kernel. No target is available for earlier versions of Novell NetWare, SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 or the Novell Open Enterprise Server Linux kernel.