Technology We Cover

“Ethernet Storage” refers to any storage networking products that use Ethernet as the storage-to-host network – for example iSCSI disk arrays, or Network-Attached Storage systems using the NFS protocol.  

The latest IDC Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware tracker (March 2010) estimated that in 2009 almost 40% of all networked storage revenues, and 47% of total networked storage capacity, were Ethernet Storage. In addition in 2009 Ethernet storage revenues grew 51% (twice as fast as the overall networked storage market), and capacity grew 128%.

In fact it is becoming increasingly common across IT organizations with “Ethernet only” data centers -- with all storage traffic using an Ethernet infrastructure for SAN, NAS, and remote datacenter connectivity.  This phenomenon is likely to become increasingly widespread in the coming years as cloud computing environments emerge, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is more aggressively deployed,  and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solutions enter the mainstream.  

Currently the ESF consists of two Special Interest Groups, the iSCSI SIG and the NFS SIG. However, we do intend to create other technology-focused SIGs, based on vendor demand and IT interest.

For more information on iSCSI, NFS and Ethernet Storage, be sure to visit the Ethernet Education pages of our website.