Small businesses get taste of iSCSI

With designs to help small enterprises migrate from direct attached to networked storage, Advanced Digital Information (ADIC) this week will offer an iSCSI option in its smaller tape libraries.

The company joins Spectra Logic and Quantum in providing an iSCSI option within some of its tape libraries to remote offices, workgroups, and the smallest enterprises.

The first libraries to get iSCSI connectivity in the form of a controller are the Scalar 24 and Scalar 100, said Jeff Eckard, product marketing manager of ADIC’s connectivity products. The company discussed adding iSCSI support three years ago when the Scalar 100 launched, but the technology was not mature enough, he said. Now the tape industry is playing catch-up.

“Tape libraries are definitely lagging behind the other storage pieces with support for iSCSI,” Eckard said. “This end of the market is using direct attached storage. iSCSI gives them the advantage of network-based backup.”

The new iSCSI controller card joins an FC (Fibre Channel) and SCSI offering in the two Scalar products. Both the Scalar 24 and Scalar 100 will be available in March.

Also making iSCSI noise is Adaptec. This week the company will introduce the iSA1500, an iSCSI-to-SATA (Serial ATA) array that was designed by Eurologic, a company it acquired in March.

The 1U-high array is equipped with four SATA drives and offers 1TB of data storage. Steve Paulhus, strategic marketing manager of Adaptec’s external storage group, envisions the array being used by SMBs (small to midsize business) as primary storage and as a replacement to DAS (direct attached storage).

“With only a 50 percent utilization rate of storage in DAS, SMBs will move to iSCSI to consolidate storage,” Paulhus said. “We really see 2004 as the year of iSCSI adoption.”