It's not necessarily news that EMC Corp. and Network Appliance Inc.
(NetApp) disagree. These bitter rivals have been known to slug it
out publicly over virtually every subject in IT. But as 2007 has
gotten started, the subject du jour has been the hot topic of
iSCSI, and its future. The debate between
EMC and NetApp has sparked a lively discussion among users and
analysts.
This latest round between the two heavyweights of the storage
industry began with a
blog post by Chuck Hollis, vice president of
technology alliances for EMC.
In his post, Hollis cited IDC numbers showing that IP SANs have
attained just 5% of the overall market despite years of heavy
marketing pushes and predictions that "this is the 'Year of iSCSI.'
"
At least at the moment, Hollis wrote, "Despite the obvious economic
advantages on the [iSCSI] hardware side, the people side of the
equation not only negated any economic impact, but pretty much
ensured that people who had started with
Fibre Channel would largely stay with Fibre
Channel for the time being. We could give the stuff away, it
wouldn't matter."
In a follow-up interview with SearchStorage.com, Hollis
expressed his frustration over what he views as slow adoption for
iSCSI. "We as technologists often forget that just because it works
better doesn't mean that users will want it," he said. Hollis said
he has come to believe that Fibre Channel is too deeply entrenched
in customer accounts at this point to ever be seriously threatened
by iSCSI.
"There may be some organizational inertia," he said. "Customers
are trained on Fibre Channel, they've been deploying it for years,
and we in the IT industry who have been pushing iSCSI may have
solved a problem they didn't think they had."
Meanwhile, in response to Hollis' post, NetApp's co-founder,
executive vice president and resident corporate blogger Dave Hitz
was -- perhaps predictably -- quick to take issue. "When I look at
the iSCSI numbers for the past few years, what I see is an
explosion of success," Hitz
wrote, comparing the rising revenue for
iSCSI products to NetApp's own quick rise to the top as a
startup back in the 90s, a comparison that favors the growth of
iSCSI. "ISCSI is now 10 times as big as NetApp was when we went
public. I can tell you that it sure felt like the 'Year of
NetApp' when we reached that milestone."
In the days since the discussion got under way, users and
analysts have been taking their own sides. Most seem to agree with
Hollis that the development of iSCSI into a widely used protocol
has been slow, but hold starkly different opinions on what it means
in the end.
In one corner: 'ISCSI will continue to languish'
Chris M. Evans, managing director for Brookend Ltd., a storage
consultancy in the U.K., and a user/blogger who commented on
Hollis' post, told SearchStorage he had seen the "organizational
inertia" Hollis referred to firsthand. "When looking at Fibre
Channel vs. IP [for one client] it was very difficult to get the
network guys to give us a straight answer on what we wanted to do,"
he said. "In a lot of large organizations, networks and storage are
separate teams, both with their own territory. ISCSI transcends
that boundary somewhat, and I don't see either group giving up
ownership of their part of the infrastructure."
 | | | | | There is no single vendor that
defines iSCSI category, and until there is one, it will continue to
languish.
Anil Gupta,
storage blogger and systems engineerQuantum
Corp. |
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Another issue, according to Evans, is standardization. Relatively
few Fibre Channel
HBA, array and switch manufacturers, he
pointed out, makes interoperability checking and certification
more manageable. Meanwhile, having many more IP switch and
NIC manufacturers makes it "impossible for
any storage vendor to certify all iSCSI options in terms of
external cards plus all the onboard NICs, so the stack is going
to be inherently less stable," Evans said. "So iSCSI solves a
problem in that it's cheap and simple to implement, but it will
continue to lack mainstream uptake because of the support
issues."
Another user, Anil Gupta, a storage blogger and storage systems
engineer providing professional services and field support for
Quantum Corp., expressed a similar opinion following the original
debate on his own site. "The first four years of iSCSI revenue are
divvied up between several iSCSI vendors with no single vendor
dominating the iSCSI category," Gupta
wrote. In contrast, he said, most
network attached storage (NAS) revenue went
to NetApp in the beginning, and NetApp was "equated with"
NAS.
"Can you tell me which company is equated to iSCSI in its sixth
year? Nobody." Gupta wrote. "There is no single vendor that defines
iSCSI category, and until there is one, it will continue to
languish."
"ISCSI has multiple battle lines to contend with" between NAS,
DAS and Fibre Channel, according to Greg
Schulz, founder and analyst with the StorageIO Group, who said
he believes iSCSI will challenge Fibre Channel for greater
market share, but not anytime soon. "Near term, while the hype
will continue to be around iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel, the real
battle will continue to evolve to be iSCSI vs. NAS, particularly
in the midmarket, SMB, high-end SOHO and enterprise ROBO
environments," Schulz wrote in an email to SearchStorage.
In the other corner: 'Time and again, Ethernet wins'
"People get impatient with iSCSI because its potential has been
historically over stated, and it was somehow supposed to right the
wrongs of the entire industry," said Brad O'Neill, senior analyst
with the Taneja Group. But, he added, "Time and again, Ethernet
wins -- the advantages of a common network are just too
massive."
| | | | | You don't instantly get the
boulder to the top of the hill and claim this is the 'Year of the
Boulder.' You gain success with each passing day, week, month and
year.
Tony Asaro,
analystEnterprise Strategy Group |
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"Think IBM OS/2 and Novell Netware 2 vs. Windows 3.1," said Tory
Skyers, network administrator for Fox and Roach Realtors, the
nation's fourth largest realtor and a subsidiary of Prudential
Financial Inc. As recently as a decade ago, Skyers said, Novell and
OS/2 were the standard operating systems, with huge corporate
support that wouldn't dream of touching Windows, he said.
"Microsoft said, 'OK fine, you win -- we bow out of corporate
space, we'll take over the user's desktop and own it,' " Skyers
said. "Now iSCSI is saying, 'OK, fine, Fibre Channel, you win -- we
will bow out of enterprise and take over the SMB green field.' "
Eventually, according to Skyers, the Windows operating system took
over at home, and because it was more familiar to corporate
employees, edged its way into the enterprise as well. This, he
predicted, is exactly what will happen with iSCSI.
"All those SMB greenfields grow up to become Fortune-whatever
companies," Skyers said. Home storage use is exploding as well, he
pointed out, and it's all being done over Ethernet. "Big companies
will soon start hiring folks that use the iSCSI all their lives --
it is already happening."
"I just think we got caught up in big marketing statements like
'The Year of Blah' -- and it is silly," said Tony Asaro, analyst
with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), referring to Hollis'
question of when the long-predicted 'Year of iSCSI' will come.
"It's like pushing a boulder up a hill. You don't instantly get the
boulder to the top of the hill and claim this is the 'Year of the
Boulder.' You gain success with each passing day, week, month and
year."
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