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An iSCSI target is a storage resource located on an iSCSI server (more generally, one of potentially many instances of iSCSI storage nodes running on that server) as a "target". An iSCSI target usually represents hard disk storage, often accessed using an Ethernet-based network.
Software packages are available to allow a customer to configure a computer with disk drives and a network interface to be an iSCSI target.
| Function | FalconStor | FreeNAS | Microsoft Windows Storage Server [1] | Open-E [2] | Openfiler |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous Data Protection (CDP) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Snapshot | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mirroring and Replication | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Thin Provisioning | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| I/O caching | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-user mutual CHAP authorization | No | No | No | No | No |
| IPsec tunnelling | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Software RAID | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual Optical Drive | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual tape library | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| Microsoft Management Console support | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| PerfMon support | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| High availability support | Yes | No | Yes | Yes, but unstable [3] | No |
| VHD support | Yes | Yes-CHAP | Yes | Yes | No |
| Dynamically expanding file support | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Virtual Burner support | No | No | No | No | No |
| EventViewer support | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| MPIO | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Volume Snapshot Service | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| VMware integration toolkit | No | No | No | No | No |
| Remote management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited Network Interface Controller Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (Old v:1) |
| Storage unlimited | No 64 TB | Yes | Yes | No 4/8/16 (more need additional license) | Yes |
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disk drives and tape drives, but it can connect a wide range of other devices, including scanners and CD drives, although not all controllers can handle all devices. The SCSI standard defines command sets for specific peripheral device types; the presence of "unknown" as one of these types means that in theory it can be used as an interface to almost any device, but the standard is highly pragmatic and addressed toward commercial requirements.
In computing, iSCSI is an acronym for Internet Small Computer Systems Interface, an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. It provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. It can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft and released on April 24, 2003, about 18 months after the launch of the Windows XP operating system. It is the successor to Windows 2000 Server and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Windows Server 2003's kernel was later adopted in the development of Windows Vista.
In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter (HBA) connects a computer, which acts as the host system, to other network and storage devices. The terms are primarily used to refer to devices for connecting SCSI, Fibre Channel and SATA devices. Devices for connecting to IDE, Ethernet, FireWire, USB and other systems may also be called host adapters.
In computing, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a point-to-point serial protocol that moves data to and from computer-storage devices such as hard disk drives and tape drives. SAS replaces the older Parallel SCSI bus technology that first appeared in the mid-1980s. SAS, like its predecessor, uses the standard SCSI command set. SAS offers optional compatibility with Serial ATA (SATA), versions 2 and later. This allows the connection of SATA drives to most SAS backplanes or controllers. The reverse, connecting SAS drives to SATA backplanes, is not possible.
ATA over Ethernet (AoE) is a network protocol developed by the Brantley Coile Company, designed for simple, high-performance access of block storage devices over Ethernet networks. It is used to build storage area networks (SANs) with low-cost, standard technologies.
A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.
VMware ESXi is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS components, such as a kernel.
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
In computing the SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) is a protocol that allows one computer to access SCSI devices attached to another computer via remote direct memory access (RDMA). The SRP protocol is also known as the SCSI Remote Protocol. The use of RDMA makes higher throughput and lower latency possible than what is possible through e.g. the TCP/IP communication protocol. RDMA is only possible with network adapters that support RDMA in hardware. Examples of such network adapters are InfiniBand HCAs and Ethernet network adapters with RoCE or iWARP support. While the SRP protocol has been designed to use RDMA networks efficiently, it is also possible to implement the SRP protocol over networks that do not support RDMA.
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as direct-attached storage. A SAN typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not accessible through the local area network (LAN).
IBM Storwize systems were virtualizing RAID computer data storage systems with raw storage capacities up to 32 PB. Storwize is based on the same software as IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC).
Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 is the brand name of Hitachi Data Systems mid-range storage platforms.
In computing, Linux-IO (LIO) Target is an open-source implementation of the SCSI target that has become the standard one included in the Linux kernel. Internally, LIO does not initiate sessions, but instead provides one or more Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs), waits for SCSI commands from a SCSI initiator, and performs required input/output data transfers. LIO supports common storage fabrics, including FCoE, Fibre Channel, IEEE 1394, iSCSI, iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER), SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) and USB. It is included in most Linux distributions; native support for LIO in QEMU/KVM, libvirt, and OpenStack makes LIO also a storage option for cloud deployments.
StarWind Software, Inc. is a computer software and hardware appliance company specializing in storage virtualization and building iSCSI, iSER, NVMe over Fabrics, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) SAN, and NFS and SMB3 NAS as well using commodity hardware. StarWind started offering combined software-hardware product called "HyperConverged Appliance" which is aggregation of Dell and SuperMicro servers, hypervisor from Microsoft and VMware, StarWind own storage virtualization software doing DRAM and flash caching, tiering and log-structuring for performance increase reasons, Veeam Software VM backup and replication, VM management and so on, essentially a "private-cloud-in-a-box".
Dell Fluid File System, or FluidFS, is a shared-disk filesystem made by Dell that provides distributed file systems to clients. Customers buy an appliance: a combination of purpose-built network-attached storage (NAS) controllers with integrated primary and backup power supplies attached to block level storage via the iSCSI or Fiber Channel protocol. A single Dell FluidFS appliance consists of two controllers operating in concert connecting to the back-end storage area network (SAN). Depending on the storage capacity requirements and user preference, FluidFS version 4 NAS appliances can be used with Compellent or EqualLogic SAN arrays. The EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 connect to the client network and to Dell's EqualLogic arrays with either 1 Gbit/s (FS7600) or 10 Gbit/s (FS7610) iSCSI protocol. For Compellent, FluidFS is available with either 1 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI connectivity to the client network and connection to the backend Compellent SAN can be either 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI.
Software-defined storage (SDS) is a marketing term for computer data storage software for policy-based provisioning and management of data storage independent of the underlying hardware. Software-defined storage typically includes a form of storage virtualization to separate the storage hardware from the software that manages it. The software enabling a software-defined storage environment may also provide policy management for features such as data deduplication, replication, thin provisioning, snapshots and backup.
SCST is a GPL licensed SCSI target software stack. The design goals of this software stack are high performance, high reliability, strict conformance to existing SCSI standards, being easy to extend and easy to use. SCST does not only support multiple SCSI protocols but also supports multiple local storage interfaces and also storage drivers implemented in user-space via the scst_user driver.
XigmaNAS is a network-attached storage (NAS) server software with a dedicated management web interface. It is free software under the terms of the Simplified BSD license.
Enterprise Storage OS, also known as ESOS, is a Linux distribution that serves as a block-level storage server in a storage area network (SAN). ESOS is composed of open-source software projects that are required for a Linux distribution and several proprietary build and install time options. The SCST project is the core component of ESOS; it provides the back-end storage functionality.
