iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel SANs: Three Reasons Not To Choose Sides

By Strategic Storage Solutions

In the on-going war between storage technologies, Fibre Channel and iSCSI continue to battle it out. Fibre Channel provides low-latency and high availability, making it the ideal storage platform for business critical applications. But Fibre Channel can be expensive and complex to manage. With IP everywhere, iSCSI is easy to implement and manage and much more affordable than Fibre Channel. But iSCSI may not match the performance and availability of Fibre Channel. So how do you choose?

Compellent believes the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Most businesses need both Fibre Channel and iSCSI server connectivity to optimize their storage resources. Fibre Channel delivers the performance required for select applications while iSCSI enables an organization to cost-effectively add new devices to their storage area network by utilizing existing IP infrastructure.

It is Compellent's position that storage customers shouldn't be forced to take sides when purchasing a SAN. Customers should be able to choose the technologies that make sense for their IT infrastructure today and still have the flexibility to change technologies as business needs change or implement new technologies as they become available. A highly scalable, standards-based hardware architecture, such as the one Compellent provides, can free customers from technology risk by providing the capability to mix and match server interface or drive technology.