"In the last five years, applications running on servers have become critical to businesses. But we end up with with too many data touch points to manage efficiently. The solution is to install a Storage Area Network. For many businesses iSCSI is the way to go." David Dale, industry evangelist at Network Appliance.

Glossary of iSCSI terminology

FCP: (Fibre Channel Protocol) - a protocol for transporting SCSI commands and data across a Fibre Channel network.

Fibre Channel: Aan older standard for connecting computing devices into a network. Used predominantly for setting up Storage Area Networks, Fibre is much more expensive than iSCSI and provides some advanced features not currenlty supported by iSCSI.

IP: (Internet Protocol):- The dominant protocol used for directing the movement of packets of information from one computer to another. Usually works with/and is combined with TCP in the phrase TCP/IP.

IPS: (Internet Protocol Storage): A group of protocols that use the IP protocol to move data across a storage network. FCIP, iFCP, and iSCSI are all examples of IPS protocols.

iSCSI (eye-scuzzy): Internet Small Computer System Interface. Protocol for transporting SCSI commands and data across an IP network.

LAN: (Local Area Networ) A network of interconnected computers, usually consisting of clients and servers. Ethernet is the most common LAN.

NAS: (rhymes with gas): Network Attached Storage is a storage device attached to a LAN that provides file-oriented storage to clients.

SAN: (rhymes with "tan"): Storage Area Networks are networks of host systems and mass storage devices. Used to share disks and tapes with multiple hosts. SANs move stored data at the block level and have no need to be aware of file structure.

SCSI: (Small Computer System Interface) A set of standards used to connect and transfer data between computers and peripheral devices such as disk drives. Designed to a vendor neutral standard that works with many different types of devices from different vendors SCSI has long been the default standard for networked storage.

TCP: (Transmission Control Protocol) An Internet protocol used to insure that packets arrive intact, in the proper order, and error-free. Usually works with/ and is combined with IP in the phrase TCP/IP.