What Is VMware Storage vMotion?

VMware Storage vMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machine disk files within and across storage arrays. Building on the success of VMware vMotion a production proven technology used for the live migration of virtual machines Storage vMotion relocates virtual machine disk files from one shared storage location to another shared storage location. It achieves this with zero downtime, continuous service availability and complete transaction integrity. Storage vMotion enables organizations to perform proactive storage migrations, simplify array refreshes/retirements, improve virtual machine storage performance and free up valuable storage capacity.

 

Fibre Channel

Fibre Channel, or FC, is high performance  network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre channal communicate between computer devices at data rare of 4Gbps, 8Gbps and 10Gbps. Fibre chanaal offers point to point, switched fabric and arbitrated  loop topology to configure storage network.

Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)–accredited standards committee. It started use primarily in the supercomputer field, but has become the standard connection type for storage area networks (SAN) in enterprise storage. Despite its name, Fibre Channel signaling can run on both twisted pair copper wire and fiber-optic cables.

What is iSCSI?

iSCSI (for "Internet SCSI") protocol allows clients (called initiators) to send SCSI commands (CDBs) to SCSI storage devices (targets) on remote servers. It is a popularStorage Area Network (SAN) protocol, allowing organizations to consolidate storage into data center storage arrays while providing hosts (such as database and web servers) with the illusion of locally-attached disks. Unlike Fibre Channel, which requires special-purpose cabling, iSCSI can be run over long distances using existing network infrastructure.

 

iSCSI uses TCP/IP (typically TCP ports 860 and 3260). In essence, iSCSI simply allows two hosts to negotiate and then exchange SCSI commands using IP networks. By doing this, iSCSI takes a popular high-performance local storage bus and emulates it over wide-area networks, creating a storage area network (SAN). Unlike some SAN protocols, iSCSI requires no dedicated cabling; it can be run over existing switching and IP infrastructure. As a result, iSCSI is often seen as a low-cost alternative to Fibre Channel, which requires dedicated infrastructure.