I've been a user of Fibre Channel SANs for about eight years. I have used the Dell | EMC-based arrays throughout and have gone through a few product transitions from the FC4700 to the CX-600 to most recently a CX3-80. I always liked the Navisphere management tool and was able to great performance across the range of applications that I set up to use the Fibre Channel storage.
About eight months ago I was finally convinced to try out some iSCSI arrays. First, I worked with the Dell | EMC CX3-40c, which has both iSCSI and Fibre Channel ports. This configuration didn't really seem all that different from what I was used to with Fibre Channel, mostly because I was still using Navisphere. Next, I set up and used a PowerVault MD3000i and found this array to be really easier in some ways, although it didn't have the same features in lots of respects. Finally, about four months ago I started using some Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series iSCSI storage arrays. And I did some performance testing with them in a whitepaper that was released about a month ago. The net was that this setup is really much easier, and I was able to get great performance.
We are having a chat here on delltechcenter to discuss when to use what type of storage for virtualization, and we expect a lot of the discussion to be about iSCSI versus Fibre Channel. Feel free to join the chat or check out the transcript, depending on when you are reading this.
I haven't done a head-to-head performance comparison of Fibre Channel versus iSCSI, and I don't plan to either. I've been able to get great performance with both in the tests that I have run. It's more the ease of setup and use that makes iSCSI so compelling for me. I had resisted iSCSI for a while because I just knew that it wouldn't be good enough, but now that I have started using it I find that it works fine. I think that Fibre Channel still has places where it fits best, but I would highly recommend that iSCSI be considered for all new projects. I'm still using both in my lab. You just might find that you will like iSCSI-if you try it.
Todd
