TechTarget IT Briefing

As technologies, iSCSI and virtualization are interesting, but together they are particularly interesting because of the value that they can bring to IT organizations. Virtualization requires customers to implement a shared storage backend. Customers have a choice between either iSCSI or Fiber Channel for that shared storage backend.

This document discusses how iSCSI can provide easier manageability and a better overall customer experience with virtualization than Fiber Channel. In particular, it helps alleviate some of the storage complexity that occurs while implementing virtualization. It promotes virtual machine mobility -- the ability to transfer a virtual machine from one physical server to another in the event of a failure. It also reduces the amount of money that customers have to pay to implement shared storage. Finally, iSCSI enables full storage functionality for a virtualized host.