To those in the storage industry, the phenomenal growth in iSCSI has come as no surprise. Because of its excellent performance, ease of management, and configuration flexibility, it's the storage interface of choice for many applications running on Windows Server.
Take Microsoft Exchange Server as an example. For Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000, the typical Exchange Server was configured with direct-attached storage or internal disks -- not very sophisticated, compared with Fibre Channel SANs. With Exchange 2003, administrators want better performance, easier management, and more configuration choices in the storage. iSCSI is the perfect fit.
It's easy to install and manage, very flexible, and its performance is an excellent match for Windows applications like Exchange. For Exchange 2007, the demand for iSCSI will continue to increase. iSCSI offers many disk choices that perfectly complement Exchange 2007.
In November, Dell Computer announced the purchase of a leading iSCSI vendor, EqualLogic, for $1.4 billion. A nice move on Dell's part considering how well iSCSI and Windows Server perform together.
... David Ferris