Although Nishan Systems $29,995 IPS 3300 Multiprotocol Storage Switch is largely unchanged from the version I tested last year (eWeek Labs May 14, 2001, review of the IPS 3300 is at www.eweek. com/links), Nishan has made one important addition—the switch now supports the iSCSI protocol.
When testing Alacritechs 1000×1 Single Port Server and Storage Accelerator (see eWeek Labs April 29 review at www.eweek.com/links), I found the IPS 3300 came in very handy as the link between a Fibre Channel storage network and an iSCSI IP network.
In Alacritech 1000×1 tests, the IPS 3300 sustained high speeds, which was all the more impressive because the switch had to convert traffic from Fibre Channel to iSCSI and vice versa.
The IPS 3300 still supports MFCP, or Metropolitan Fibre Channel Protocol, but with market momentum clearly favoring iSCSI, this protocol will probably become an afterthought.
The IPS 3300 switch also has excellent management tools, so I could easily set up storage zones and manage elements such as ports and storage groups.