Chelsio Ships iSCSI-Based Storage Software for Linux

Chelsio Communications, which makes 10-Gigabit Ethernet and iSCSI acceleration adapters and cluster storage software, announced on Feb. 2 its first stand-alone iSCSI Target 3.0 software, which enables enterprises to build high-performance IP storage area networks using existing Linux servers and hardware.

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These high-performance, iSCSI-based storage systems are designed to take advantage of lower-cost Ethernet connectivity.

The Chelsio iSCSI Target 3.0 can turn any Linux partition into a high-performance iSCSI target, a company spokesperson said. This storage can be assigned to any computer on the enterprise Ethernet network, giving users a commercial-grade IP SAN instantly.

"Our iSCSI Target 3.0 software will shake up the Linux storage market, since it enables enterprises to cost-effectively deploy business-critical IP SANs using volume Linux hardware," said Chelsio President and CEO Kianoosh Naghshineh in Sunnyvale, Calif.

"This new release works extremely well across a broad selection of Ethernet adapters, but the software is optimized for use with our Storage Accelerator products to deliver the best performance and high availability requirements for storage networking and unified wire applications."

The Chelsio iSCSI package is designed for data-intensive applications such as video streaming, image processing and backup. Specific applications include SAN edge devices such as storage arrays, storage-aware devices in SANs—such as virtualization engines—and IP-based data centers built with blade servers.

The iSCSI 3.0 Target software supports a range of hardware and software platforms, including Chelsio T3-based Ethernet adapters and most third-party Ethernet NICs. The software supports popular RAID, SAS, SATA and other storage devices; it also supports various Linux kernel versions and distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

The highly optimized iSCSI target stack provides support for greater than 2TB disks, enabling deployment of large disk arrays, backup applications and high-definition video server applications.

Click here for a review of StoreVault S500, a SAN/NAS device from NetApp.

The software also supports Microsoft Cluster Service for high-availability applications, MPIO (Multi-Path I/O) for fault tolerance against single points of failure and load balancing of I/O data traffic for better application performance.

The iSCSI Target 3.0 more than doubles throughput performance over Chelsios previous iSCSI Target 2.0 software release and is the highest-performance iSCSI target software in the market, the spokesperson said. A simple graphical user interface is used to configure iSCSI Target 3.0.

Pricing and availability

Chelsio iSCSI Target 3.0 is available now for licensing to qualified customers, and a demo version is available for customers to evaluate the software. The iSCSI Target 3.0 software has been tested from wireless to 10Gb speeds. It is list-priced at $495 per instance.

Chelsio plans to deliver other components during the first half of this year as part of a full turnkey storage software package it is developing.

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