Thank you for the migraine
Chris exposes his shortcomings here:
"It's true that a 1Gbit iSCSI link is cheaper than a 10Gbit/s FCoE link. The iSCSI link needs a network interface card (NIC) - hopefully with a TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) on it. This saves the server processor from having to spend cycles formatting all the TCP/IP stuff, which is complex."
Almost all storage vendors and VMware, in fact, , have shown iSCSI SW initiators perform close to, if not better than, iSCSI HBA’s and TOE’s with little overhead. I think servers with over 16 cores and GB's of memory can handle some TCP processing.
Reality check? You might want to spec out a new x86 server. It's 2008, not 2001.
But what do I know? I guess HP was stupid to buy LeftHand, too?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
