Migration Path to Fully Integrated IP-SAN
STANISLAV MILANOVIC *, NIKOS E. MASTORAKIS #
*
WSEAS, Highest Institute of Education, Science and Technology
Haghiou I. Theologou 17
15773, Zographou,
Athens, GREECE
#
MILITARY INSTITUTIONS OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
HELLENIC NAVAL ACADEMY
Terma Hatzikyriakou, 18539, Piraeus, GREECE.
Abstract: - Interconnection of existing Fibre Channel SANs over public IP-based infrastructure (the
Internet) has been described in this paper. By combining best-of-breed approaches from the storage
and networking industries, deployed IP-SAN solution allowed customer to use existing
infrastructure technology, then build upon it to develop an integrated, IP storage area network that
worked in local, metropolitan and wide area environments.
Key-Words: - Storage Area Network (SAN) , iSCSI, IP, QoS, Fibre Channel, Virtual Private Network
(VPN).
1 Introduction existing Fibre Channel SAN is to combine the
Storage technology is changing as rapidly as high-performance data transfer capabilities of Fibre
today’s business environment. The storage industry Channel with the interoperable and widely
itself is growing as fast as it is changing. To understood TCP/IP. Because of its ubiquity,
economically and efficiently manage this growth TCP/IP is an ideal protocol for network
and change, a new concept of storage area interoperability and now for storage
networks (SAN) has been developed. From a client interoperability. IP-SAN has been introduced to
network perspective, the SAN environment bring together the advantages of established
complements the ongoing advancements in LAN network infrastructures, current industry standards
(Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area and the ability to leverage IT resources that will
Network) technologies [1-9] by extending the satisfy the growing demand for data storage.
benefits of improved performance and capabilities
all the way from the client and backbone through to For this reason, a very significant development in
servers and storage. storage area networking has just emerged: SANs
based on the Internet Protocol (IP). Built on the
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a growing foundation of IP and Gigabit Ethernet, storage over
concern for most data center system administrators IP can run in a metropolitan area network (MAN)
and their management. These costs arise from all with Gigabit Ethernet, including switches, routers
aspects of storage management, including hiring and optical multiplexers.
and training of qualified personnel, backup and
restoration, equipment upgrade, monitoring,
learning new storage protocols, and 2 iSCSI Overview
interoperability. Emerging storage networking technology is based
on the Internet SCSI (iSCSI) standard which
The most efficient way to reduce the costly defines the encapsulation of SCSI packets in TCP,
management, deployment, and support issues faced which are routed using IP [14]. IP-based storage
by all storage administrators by extending their integrates existing storage protocols, such as SCSI
and Fibre Channel, directly with the IP protocol. provides security at the packet processing layer of
With this integration, the storage and networking network. Good security