Will server virtualization end the FC-iSCSI debate?

Let’s take a trip to the future this week. Imagine that we travel forward in time -- say, 100 years from now. How will the technological landscape of storage change in one century? What will our descendants think of the state of our technology?

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My guess -- perhaps even my hope -- is that our great-grandchildren will look back at our potpourri of conflicting storage technologies and products and cringe. "How could those people ever get anything working out of that spaghetti-like mess?" our posterity might ask.

I am on this train of thought because a recent announcement involving FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet, which I explained in this column a few weeks ago) added another noodle to the dish of storage-tech spaghetti and revived the old FC-versus-iSCSI debate.

That debate (it’s open-ended, but you can find an interesting part of the discussion here) centers around which of the two transport protocols serves better the needs of enterprise storage. It’s a fascinating discussion, and one that triggers pointed and accurate technical comments to support either side of the issue, as they say in Washington, D.C., but unfortunately is also as useless as many political debates.

Why? Because even if one side could prove its point -- and I don’t think either can -- customers don’t necessarily buy the best overall technology. They buy whatever best serves their needs, and the technical excellence argument rarely sways that decision process.

Back to our two transport protocols. Both FC and iSCSI have many appealing points; the former is field-proven and mature, while the latter claims ease of use and a better future (up to 100G). There is obviously more to both technologies than that succinct comparison, but a conversation I had last week with Dell Storage Technologist Matt Baker reminded me of another selling point that iSCSI storage solutions can claim over rival FC-based products. It has to do with server virtualization and how its requirements may impact your storage acquisitions.

“One of the areas that not very many people talk about is storage for server virtualization,” Baker says, adding that many Dell customers are concerned about the intersection points of server virtualization and storage area networks. “Part of what we found [in our customers’ concerns] is the complexity associated with managing a FC-based shared storage solution in a virtual environment."

Baker enumerates the major challenges that admins face when combining server virtualization and SANs, including facilitating VM mobility while maintaining data integrity and data security. What's the best way to back up data, and how can you take advantage of the benefits of a SAN in a virtualized world? 

“As we dug more into it, we started to discover that iSCSI, in many ways, helps to alleviate those challenges,” Baker says.