InfiniBand Trade Association Ratifies iSER Storage Protocol

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        

            

Contact:           Cheri Winterberg

978-660-6405

cheriw@owenmedia.com

 

InfiniBandSM Trade Association Ratifies iSER (iSCSI RDMA) 

Storage Protocol for InfiniBand

 

The iSER specification enhances InfiniBand's capabilities 

to address storage in the enterprise

 

SAN FRANCISCO - September 25, 2006 - The InfiniBand Trade Association
today announced that it has released a new annex to the specification
providing support for iSER over Infiniband.  The iSER annex extends
InfiniBand's support for high performance storage.  At 10-20 Gbps
bitrates, InfiniBand's performance is now more than triple that of
FibreChannel, and at only half the cost.  Subsequently, InfiniBand has
six times the price performance advantage of FibreChannel.  

iSER is a new IETF standard extension to iSCSI that includes support for
RDMA-enabled networks such as InfiniBand; the new annex closes the loop
by mapping the iSER extensions onto InfiniBand.  The combination of
iSER and InfiniBand's unsurpassed performance brings significantly
greater performance to iSCSI while leveraging iSCSI's existing
comprehensive management capabilities.  This allows heterogeneous
storage environments to utilize a single protocol and management
infrastructure while taking advantage of InfiniBand's performance and
channel characteristics.  

"Solutions using iSER can leverage iSCSI's rich management capabilities
and InfiniBand's high performance," said Arun Taneja, analyst from
Taneja Group.  "Now iSCSI is capable of supporting the demanding storage
and uptime requirements of enterprise data centers."

 iSER combined with InfiniBand, the only RDMA standard available today,
provides the ideal solution for enterprise and technical computing grids
that require high performance clustering and storage.  As iSER is
standards-based and no changes need to be made to use the technology, a
user can protect his technology investment.

 "iSER is based on iSCSI I/O and management protocols/processes and
provides  these rich features with a traditional iSCSI look and feel,"
said John Hufferd, senior executive director of technology at Brocade
Communications Systems, Inc. and co-author of the iSER extension to
iSCSI.   "This means we have a set of SCSI I/O and management protocols
that will operate on normal TCP/IP networks, iWarp (RDMA TCP/IP)
networks and now on InfiniBand networks.  iSER makes iSCSI available and
operationally ready for the enterprise."

iSER has a comprehensive set of storage networking capabilities enabling
features such as:  plug and play deployment, name services, automated
discovery, security, automated error and failure recovery, change
modifications, load balancing and standard management interfacing.

iSER is in production quality as part of the OpenFabrics Enterprise
Distribution (OFED) and is available in leading Linux distributions from
Red Hat and Novell/SuSE.  iSER is also part of the recently-released
kernel 2.6.18.

FalconStor Software(r), LSI Logic, SGI and Voltaire are currently
working on iSER-based InfiniBand storage products.  Many other solutions
are planned for release within the next year.

 

About the InfiniBand Trade Association

The Internet is creating an increased demand for server computer I/O
subsystem performance, scalability, reliability and flexibility. A shift
to a switched fabric-based I/O architecture will enable industry
participants to meet this increased demand. The InfiniBand Trade
Association developed a specification for a channel-based, switched
fabric architecture that provides a scalable performance range of
2.5Gbps to 120Gbps, meeting current and future needs from entry level to
high-end enterprise systems. InfiniBand I/O is the only open standard
available today with remote direct memory access (RDMA). The InfiniBand
Trade Association represents the industry's choice for developing I/O
technologies that will keep pace with the demands of the Internet age.

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InfiniBand(TM/SM) is a trademark and service mark of the InfiniBand
Trade Association. Other names and brands are the property of their
respective owners.