The New iSCSI Players
Dell entered the iSCSI fray for the first time last week with its new PowerVault MD3000i array, following IBM's third try at the iSCSI market two weeks earlier.
Research firm IDC reported that iSCSI storage revenue grew by 68.6 percent during the first quarter last year, and is expected to account for about 25 percent of revenue in 2011.
While smaller vendors have tackled the iSCSI market, customers of tier-one vendors are in mission-critical environments dealing with Oracle, SAP and so on, said Jamie Shepard, vice president of technology solutions at International Computerware, a Marlborough, Mass.-based solution provider.
"Before, it was the smaller customers looking for low-cost storage," Shepard said. "But 10 Gbps-Ethernet networks are coming. Core switches are changing. I don't think anyone was behind on iSCSI. The market is finally ready."
Dell's new MD3000i includes up to 45 SAS hard drives using external storage shelves for a total capacity of up to 18 Tbytes, along with two Gigabit Ethernet ports per controller, and a minimum of 1 Gbyte of mirrored cache per controller, said Dell Product Marketing Manager Steve Arrington.
Dell, Round Rock, Texas, also has several enhancements to its iSCSI offering on deck, Arrington said. Next quarter, the MD3000i will connect to SATA hard drives, and will support both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. By December, it will include support for VMware ESX Server 3.1, and by January, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, he said.
Eryck Bredy, president of Bredy Network Management, an Andover, Mass.-based small-business solution provider and Dell partner, said he has been using DataCore software to turn Dell servers into iSCSI storage arrays.
The MD3000i will make it easier for solution providers to sell Dell storage, Bredy said. "I'm a big believer that the easier it is for a customer to buy into SAN, the easier it is for me. Dell has come out with a basic SAN array. This is for the customer who has not yet bought into the idea of a SAN, or who considers products from companies like EMC too expensive."
Dell resells many EMC arrays with both the Dell and EMC monikers, including the EMC CX3 with iSCSI, but is going it alone this time. "In the SMB space, EMC's products are somewhat limited. We've filled it with the PowerVault MD3000i," Arrington said.
IBM, Armonk, N.Y., late last month introduced the DS3300 after two previously unsuccessful attempts in the iSCSI market. The DS3300 is based on an OEM array from LSI Logic, and comes in a 2U rack-mount format with room for up to 48 hard drives using expansion trays, said Charlie Andrews, director of product marketing for IBM system storage.
Each array controller can be configured with up to three adapters, allowing the array to be direct-attached to up to three host servers.
IBM plans to offer Express bundles for the DS3300, including adapter cards and cables, to help cut the total storage subsystem cost, Andrews said.