This chapter introduces two emerging new technologies: IP storage and storage over InfiniBand.
IP storage is a collection of technologies providing access to enterprise storage using an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The technologies popularly lumped into the term IP storage include (but are not limited to) iSCSI, FCIP, and iFCP, each of which is described briefly in this chapter.
InfiniBand is not a storage protocol per se; it is a high-speed, low-latency, generic network fabric. Some InfiniBand working groups are exploring using it to connect to storage, but the real focus of InfiniBand is on high-performance clusters of servers. With the advent of 3GIO, InfiniBand has lost some of its prominence as a replacement for the PCI bus.
This chapter provides a simple overview of IP storage and InfiniBand, in the interests of people who are unfamiliar with the technologies. The goal is to present the bare minimum required to understand the Microsoft implementation. Persons wishing to learn these technologies in detail may refer to the sources listed at the end of this book. After the introduction, some details about Microsoft's intended implementation of these technologies are presented. Given that Microsoft has yet to release the described software, the reader is cautioned that what is presented here is merely a best guess. No firm commercial product plans or deployment plans should be made on the basis of this chapter alone.
IP storage and InfiniBand are qualified as emerging technologies in the sense that they still have relatively minuscule commercial adoption. Of course, some of them have been in development for quite some time now.
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