Cisco Systems SN 5428 manual Introduction, Transparent SCSI Routing

Introduction

Introduction

The Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router provides universal access to storage over IP networks. The storage router software controls the operation of the Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router. You can configure the software to provide one of two types of access to storage over IP networks; either SCSI routing or Transparent SCSI routing.

SCSI routing provides IP hosts with access to Fibre Channel (FC) storage devices, using iSCSI protocol. The iSCSI protocol is an IETF-defined protocol for IP storage (ips).

Note For more information about the iSCSI protocol, refer to the IETF standards for IP storage at http://www.ietf.org.

With SCSI routing, storage device access is managed primarily in the SN 5428. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1 SCSI Routing

FC storage devices

IP hosts

Cisco SN 5428

IP

Storage access is managed

in the SN 5428.

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Transparent SCSI routing provides IP hosts with transparent access to intelligent storage arrays using iSCSI protocol; that is, each IP host is presented as an FC host to an intelligent storage array. With transparent SCSI routing, availability of storage devices is managed primarily in the intelligent storage array. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2	Transparent SCSI Routing
IP hosts		Intelligent storage
	Cisco SN 5428	array
	IP	FC

The SN 5428

presents each IP host as an FC host to the storage array.

Storage access is managed in the

storage array. 85886

In addition to providing services for accessing storage over IP networks, the SN 5428 Storage Router software provides the following services:

•VLAN Access Control—provides IP access control to storage based on a VLAN identifier (VID) number (in addition to access control through access lists)

•Authentication—provides iSCSI, Enable and Login authentication using AAA authentication methods

Release Notes for Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router Release 3.5.3

2 OL-6542-01