Storage area networks test out at plug fest

Agilent Technologies recently participated in interoperability testing of its iSCSI technology at the International iSCSI Plug Fest.

Agilent Technologies recently participated in interoperability testing of its iSCSI technology at the International iSCSI Plug Fest, held at the University of New Hampshire's iSCSI Interoperability Laboratory.

More than 17 storage networking companies participated in the event, including storage leaders such as EMC, IBM, Microsoft and NEC.

The goal of iSCSI is to provide companies with a cost-effective storage networking solution that's easy to install, manage and service.

In the future, storage area networks (SANs) will seamlessly connect to the enterprise, metro and long-haul networks.

The iSCSI protocol enables block level data to be accessed anywhere within an IP/Ethernet network.

"Since we announced our iSCSI product direction, we have seen tremendous interest from our customer base", said Michael Huether, Director of Marketing Europe, Middle East, Africa of Semiconductor Products Division.

"The iSCSI Plug Fest gave us an opportunity to further test our iSCSI development platform with a variety of solutions from multiple vendors, ensuring iSCSI interoperability in heterogeneous SAN environments".

The testing concentrated on the interoperability and conformance of the iSCSI Specification Draft Versions 0.9.

The University of New Hampshire's iSCSI Interoperability Laboratory provides the facilities, services and procedures that allows a quantitative assessment of the ability for devices or components to properly participate in multi-vendor iSCSI networks.

The purpose of the lab is to develop and disseminate technical information relative to proper implementation and use of iSCSI technology, to investigate interoperability issues related to iSCSI, and to provide a forum for their discussion.

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