IBM is rethinking its product strategy for an emerging storage
protocol known as iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System
Interface).
The company has halted development of an iSCSI storage appliance
released last year, two industry sources said, and is preparing
systems that should better address the needs of customers.
IBM announced its IP Storage 200i appliance last year, touting it
as the first fully-fledged iSCSI hardware on the market. ISCSI
promises to make existing Ethernet networks more useful for data
storage, and IBM earned praise for leading the product push behind
the standard.
Despite the praise, however, IBM's customers have called for iSCSI
support on more powerful storage systems, forcing the vendor to
reconsider the direction it will take with the technology, Sandra
Dressel, a spokeswoman at IBM, said.
"We wanted to make sure this was a technology people wanted, and we
got that validation back," Dressel said. "When new technologies
first enter the marketplace you often see them in these types of
products [appliances], but then the technology matures and goes
more into the infrastructure and eventually becomes native across
various products."
Dressel declined to provide specific details on when future IBM
iSCSI-based products might arrive or exactly how the company will
implement the technology moving forward. However, she did say that
customer feedback has led the vendor to believe iSCSI will be
supported with some of the company's more functional storage
products instead of just the 200i appliance.
One analyst said IBM has stopped development of the 200i, most
likely as a result of performance issues surrounding iSCSI-based
hardware. IBM's Dressel denied the company has stopped developing
the product.
"They may have a few 200i's in the warehouse, but the product did
die," said Arun Taneja, a senior analyst with the Enterprise
Storage Group. "It seems to have been done in a very hush hush
way."
Barbara Murphy, technical product manager at storage vendor 3ware
also said that IBM had stopped developing the 200i.
Performance problems with iSCSI-based hardware appear to be the
major hurdle affecting the adoption of the technology, Taneja
said.
The biggest benefit of the iSCSI protocol stems from its ability to
transfer block-level data normally sent via SCSI commands over IP
(Internet Protocol) networks. Sending block-level data over IP
could help link a company's SAN (storage area network) with its
Ethernet network and free up more data to more servers.
These benefits, however, cannot be achieved until products like the
200i do a better job of handling TCP/IP requests with TOE (TCP
Offload Engine) network interface cards, Taneja said.
"TCP/IP traffic is just a huge hog of processor performance," he
said. "With a TOE, all the TCP/IP traffic is off-loaded, which
means you get much better overall system performance."
Taneja said TCP/IP traffic can take up all the processing power of
an Intel 1GHz Pentium III processor, which is close to the 1.13GHz
Pentium III chip IBM has used in the 200i. With TCP/IP traffic
taking up so much horsepower, the 200i would not have many
resources left to work on actual applications, he said. Vendors
will need to roll out TOEs for iSCSI systems to make the technology
truly useful, he said.
Another analyst said several major vendors are raising questions
about iSCSI due to delays in finalising the protocol. An official
first version of the iSCSI protocol still has yet to be
delivered.
"A lot of vendors are backing away from iSCSI at the moment," John
Webster, senior analyst and founder of the Data Mobility Group,
said. "I think there is a sense among the larger vendors that they
will see more activity in the general marketplace later in this
year or even early next year."