iSCSI may cut mirroring costs

Disk mirroring could become cheaper.

The emerging SCSI over IP, or iSCSI, is a promising solution for running storage traffic over ubiquitous IP networks. This could reduce the network infrastructure cost of data mirroring, which now tends to involve dedicated network resources. With iSCSI, organizations don't need "a separate communications infrastructure for disk mirroring," said John Selep, product marketing manager for storage solutions at Hewlett-Packard Co.

"We're waiting for the standard to get completed so multiple vendors will have something to sink their teeth into," said Ken Steinhardt, director of technology analysis at EMC Corp.

Robert Manchise, chief technology officer at Anteon Corp., said that he hoped iSCSI would lower the cost of ownership. But he has not introduced the technology to any customers yet, because a definitive standard is still lacking. Most observers believe the iSCSI standard and supporting technology is still months away.