Full resolution of storage protocols in VMware environments

As the popularity of virtualization accelerates and applications in VMware environments become more prevalent, it is absolutely necessary to research and test storage protocols in VMware environments, in particular the three storage protocols: Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and Nas (NFS). Through research and testing in VMware environments, users can better understand the storage requirements of their virtualized environments, allowing their business to run more smoothly. Here we first discuss the most special iSCSI in the three protocols.

If you are creating a VMware storage architecture, you will decide on the following factors: performance, cost, and ease of use. Of course, there are other issues like security and reliability. But most users are more concerned about the former. There is also the size of the problem-you are most likely to choose the specifications you currently use or the specifications used by your colleagues.

If it's purely about performance, most people have to admit that fiber has a performance advantage in many ways, and if your host and related workloads can really take advantage of this performance, you're most likely to choose fiber. For many users, the performance level of iSCSI and NFS is acceptable, especially at first.

If you can easily maintain I/O performance through iSCSI or NFS, and the two protocols are equal in storage I/O performance, you will compare the ease of use and cost of both. For many people, iSCSI was once a key technology for ease of use. iSCSI is widely believed to be run over IP, so it's definitely more user-friendly. I've been in touch with iSCSI technology since 2002, and I know this very well, especially when users get rid of the software initiator (Software initiator) and they can accept the performance of standard Ethernet cards.

iSCSI starts to get you into trouble when you need to expand iSCSI. For example, in an ESX environment, you might want to expand by adding an iSCSI HBA to uninstall the IP overhead or boot the ESX Server from the SAN. When you start tuning performance, you may be able to add multiple HBAs, install VLANs, or take other tuning actions. These are all possible, but soon you will have a problem with architecting and want to stay away from the Fibre Channel architecture to avoid architectural planning.

At the same time, the Fibre Channel sector has begun to focus on enhancing the ease of use of technology. Although ease of use will vary based on your background, many people--including myself--find that fiber is installed like iSCSI, especially if you are extending the protocol. You would also think that using iSCSI to reach the performance limit would be much earlier than fiber optics.

Either way, you're going to encounter a block based access problem, which is VMFS or RDM. This is not a big problem, it depends on your background, but it beats a lot of people. In the past, the only option is block storage, so whether it's a problem, or there's no choice, then you have to deal with it. NFS has changed this situation to handle file access paths to VMware storage.