Pavel's diary

Exploring iSCSI

I spent a day studying iSCSI technology. Here are my notes.

iSCSI is Internet Small Computer System Interface ("Internet SCSI"), an IP-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities, developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. It is defined in RFC 3720.

General information about iSCSI can be found at:

• http://www.storagesearch.com/iscsiarticles.html - contains links to various articles about iSCSI
• A Quick Guide to iSCSI on Linux - very good introductory material. Start with this one if you want to know more about iSCSI on GNU/Linux.
• How iSCSI Works from ArdisTech
• iSCSI Review
• iSCSI SAN - GNU/Linux Target, Windows as Initiator

It is supported in some Microsoft products and also in UNIX-like operating systems.

My main goal is GNU/Linux, where it is very interesting. There are implementations for both Initiator ("client") as well as Target ("server").

iSCSI Target implementation was started by ArdisTech for Linux kernel 2.4 and lately forked to now preferred implementation The Enterprise iSCSI Target Project. iSCSI Initiator implementation is available at http://linux-iscsi.sourceforge.net/.

Interesting technology with several issues ;-) -----