Technical Paper - Storage Protocol Comparison

Original Post: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ntpronl/~3/is1d1kAdxUQ/2035-Technical-Paper-Storage-Protocol-Comparison.html

The objective of this white paper is to provide information on storage protocols and how they interoperate with VMware vSphere and related features. Not all supported storage protocols are discussed. Some notable exceptions are ATA over Ethernet (AoE) and shared/switched SAS. However, the protocols that are included in this paper are the ones that VMware is most frequently asked to compare.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Storage_Protocol_Comparison.pdf


VMware frequently is asked for guidance regarding the best storage protocol to use with VMware vSphere®. vSphere supports many storage protocols, with no preference given to any one over another. However, many customers still want to know how these protocols stack up against each other and to understand their respective pros and cons.This white paper looks at common storage protocols from a vSphere perspective. It is not intended to delve into performance comparisons, for the following two reasons:


* The Performance Engineering team at VMware already produces excellent storage performance white papers.
* Storage protocol performance can vary greatly, depending on the storage array vendor. It therefore does not make sense to compare iSCSI and NFS from one vendor, because another vendor might implement one of those protocols far better.

If you are interested in viewing performance comparisons of storage protocols, the "Conclusion" section of this paper includes links to several such documents.