Devoted to hardware, software, IT issues, and information technology management

I've made if a habit of visiting The Register, a website that originates from the U.K. and is written with that great British humor.  Their tagline for the site is "Biting the hand that feeds IT" paired with their sinister Vulture.

Aside from the wit, I run across articles on technology that hasn't quite made it to the U.S. yet or issues taking place in foreign markets.  If you haven't given them a look, I highly recommend it for its educational and recreational value.

But I digress; I just finished reading an article on "El Reg" regarding the introduction of 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel (FC) storage networking products.  While this may not be such a big deal with 10Gbit/s FC products already available, the reported advantage is that you can use your existing 1, 2 or 4Gbit/s infrastructure and it is backwards compatible.  This product is targeted to recapture some of the market share that has been lost by businesses adopting iSCSI-based Storage Area Networks (SANs), now that Gigabit Ethernet has become affordable/common and the availability of 10Gbit/s Ethernet.

While many fortune 500 companies have made significant investments in their FC infrastructure, Network Attached Storage (NAS) has also found a place in the enterprise, but I'm wondering what kind of penetration iSCSI can make in this arena.

Now that I'm working for a Small to Medium Business (SMB), I can appreciate some of the key selling points for iSCSI:

• Hardware costs or "cost per port" is less when comparing iSCSI to FC
• Support costs may be less because it isn't necessary to hire/train staff to maintain an FC SAN; you can use your existing network specialist(s)
• Expensive Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) aren't required, just Network Adapters (NICs) that incorporate a TCP Offload Engine with onboard iSCSI processing
• Access to/from the storage is accomplished through TCP/IP networks, so there are no limitations on distance

My only misgivings might be that I could potentially overload my existing network by adding storage traffic to everything else, so it might be necessary to upgrade or implement another TCP/IP network to support iSCSI traffic.  Also, I'm concerned that it would be easier for a hacker to compromise a TCP/IP network than an FC network.

What's your take on this?  Have you implemented iSCSI in your environment and if so, did you have to make any changes to your network infrastructure to accommodate the traffic?  Are you pleased with the results and have you realized any cost savings from your adoption of iSCSI?