iSCSI or Fibre Channel – Why does everyone make you choose?

There is an ongoing debate about the merits and future of both iSCSI and Fibre Channel. The growth is in iSCSI, but there is a massive installed base of FC. We believe in unifying your fabric on Ethernet and moving to 10Gbit iSCSI over time as the most cost-effective and least complicated method for storage.

But what to do now? Many organizations have both FC and iSCSI and aren’t ready to commit to one or to throw away their current investments. Most manufacturers force you to choose one or the other, and then live with that decision for years.

Today we’re announcing the new Dell/EMC CX4 series arrays which can alleviate the burden of this decision and remove the uncertainty of the future thanks to their innovative modular I/O technology. It’s called UltraFlex – stay tuned to blog as we will dive deeper into this in upcoming posts.

With UltraFlex, you get two benefits:

· First, since all of these arrays come standard with both 1Gbit iSCSI and 4Gbit FC connectivity, you can consolidate storage on iSCSI for your stranded servers that don’t required FC performance or merit FC connectivity expense with your existing FC servers and infrastructure.

· Second, you are protected in the future thanks to open slots where you can seamlessly add more ports. This can be current technologies or it can be future ones like 10Gbit iSCSI and 8Gbit FC.

With Dell/EMC CX4 you get a storage device that is flexible and future-ready – giving you the choice to adapt your storage to your changing needs without having to start over or commit today.

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iSCSI and Fibre Channel UltraFlex I/O modules on CX4-120

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Front view of the CX4-960 including, from top to bottom, 3U DAE (disk array enclosure), 4U SPE (Storage Processor Enclosure) and 2U SPS (Standby Power Supply)

About the Author: David Graves