Hi folks! I was asking on other places, but I`m gathering the different opinions. I`m working in the middle size business. We`re looking for shared storage I`m considering what iSCSI solution is better if compare of price and functionality - software or hardware? And what vendor is more reliable?

Hi, It depends on you requirement and budget. If you only use the ISCSI software on a computer, then it’s cheaper, but the perform may be bad than the dedicate fiber channel device. Correct me if I have any mistake. By the way, I recommend that you initial a post in the forum dedicated to storage so that you can get the most qualified pool of respondents. Thanks for your understanding. Best Regards, Vincent Hu

Hi there, when you are formign a mid size business there are options for you to make deal with the vendors ( VMWARE , HITACHI etc.. ) When you want to compare the performance, you need to think about the stability and the compatibility between the hardware and the OS .You have good technologies like SCSI, SAS, Fiber channel with which you connect directly to SAN. ISCSI encapsulates SCSI commands over TCP/IP protocol and provides best solution for ethernet technologies. The major advantage when compared to SMB protocol and SCSI protocol is that SCSI allows block data to get transfereed which improves the speed while transfering large blocks of data.ISCSI performs all the operations as fibre channel , so i can say ISCSI is best suited for Virtualization implementation. sainath !analyze

Hi Did you had a chance to go through the suggestions ?, please do post back if you have further questions .sainath !analyze

I`d like to perform iSCSI SAN solution for my network. I just don`t know which vendor is better.

Hi Ikersilva, Thanks for the reply, to answer the question , this depends on various factors, please understand that storage market is always in demand so you have many major players. So you should bargain every byte you purcahse , and also you need to bargain with the support they provide you along with the features. So you need to have to do market analysis rather than depending on feedbacks from engineers as you might get different feedbacks.sainath !analyze

OK, after googling I`ve decided to use software. Now I know that the leaders are Datacore, StarWind and Lefthand. Lefthand is no good for me because it`s cost too much. How about two others? Has anyone runed/tested it?

I`ve used Openfiler after it was hardly advised to me. It was told me that it is free and pretty functional and reliable. Yes, it is free, but any support will cost you a lot. How about $60 manual? I`m using StarWind now. It is twice cheaper than free Openfiler, and twice more functional.

Hi Ikersilva, any update on the requirement ?sainath !analyze

I`m testing now some iSCSI targets, such as Datacore, Starwind and Stormagic. I`ll necessary tell you about results, and will be glad if there will be any new suggestions. Thank you.

Here are some results - Datacore is good, if you like hard work - it was pretty hard even to install and set it up. Stormagic is using VMware, so if you are working with Hyper-V - forget about it. StarWind - I found it's pretty reliable, especially after new version 5 release with HA. Thank you for all of your responses.