Talk:Comparison of iSCSI targets

Proposed changes to avoid AFD

In my opinion, this article needs to be radically improved or deleted. Googling "iSCSI market share 2008" generates hits like this report synopsis and this article which make it clear that the three market leaders in iSCSI are Dell, NetApp and EMC. They are all noticably absent from this chart, which instead highlights StarWind Software, a company for which the article creator works. The two references are a StarWind Software product comparison guide and a comparison from Joachim Nässlander at Nullsession.com in which the first four of fifteen products compared are StarWind Software. That emphasis gives me concerns about the neutrality and reliability of that source. Finally, the categories for comparison are somewhat arbitrary and jumbled together.

I tagged the article for speedy deletion as advertisement because it is basically a product comparison guide for StarWind Software. The admin who declined that request correctly points out that there are similar articles of varying quality and suggested that there might be alternatives to deleting the article. I've been looking at those similar articles to see if there are ways to salvage this one. Several differences jump out:

1. The existing articles have lists of products, with one row per product.
2. The lists in the existing articles are organized alphbetically to maintain neutrality.
3. The products/companies in those lists are notable enough to have their own articles to avoid giving undue weight.
4. Where there are many criteria for comparison, the criteria are grouped and additional lists are used where needed.

We may also want to reduce the scope of the article to something that matches the information provided. That Nullsession source is titled "A feature comparison of iSCSI Target Software for Windows." A better title for this article, based on that, would be "Comparison of iSCSI target software."

These changes are fairly extensive, so I'd like to establish a consensus around these changes before moving ahead. Please share you thoughts and suggestions. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 17:54, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

There certainly are many other articles like this and an AfD seems prejudiced. The quality of these articles has often been questionable, as they are often motivated by marketing interests. It also debatable whether WP is a place for product comparisons in the first place. This list in particular provides no discussion of the criteria used in the chart, why they are important in a comparison, or any kind of other context. No information is provided as to the notability of products compared, in fact, some companies don't even have a WP entry. In particular, some major vendors appear to be missing. In addition, COI editing is strictly forbidden in an advertising fashion. To alleviate this major concern, I removed the offending product. The rest of the article should be vetted, categories and vendors added or deleted as the community sees fit, notable products will emerge. Each product should also have some kind of discussion in prose of what the product's main focus or context is. I don't recommend taking the article to AfD, since the primary objections to existence can be remedied with some effort and time. Kbrose (talk) 21:10, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: I also find it curious why this list was so narrowly entitled 'iSCSI *targets*', a target is usually a specific instance of a storage device and not the term for a product suite. This list is also highly related to List of SAN network management systems. Kbrose (talk) 21:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I agree with your points about including some prose about the criteria and about the products themselves. I'll add that to the list. Can I take your lack of disagreement with my proposed changed as agreement? Also, your point about the subject of the article is an important starting point. Is the subject windows software which performs storage virtualization and presents the virtual devices via an iSCSI interface? Seems too narrow. How about storage virtualization products that present via an iSCSI interface. Do we need to have different tables for software solutions vs appliances or different articles? Celestra (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

1) Referenced major iSCSI vendors are HARDWARE iSCSI appliances and this article is about SOFTWARE.

2) I see no sense in removing StarWind Software from the matrix as this matrix highlights other vendors in EXACTLY the same way it hightlights StarWind Software. From the chart it looks like it's Microsoft who's the winner :)

3) If somebody is missing any targets he's welcomed to add his own ones. Just spend your time on revirew... What's the problem? :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.207.119.184 (talk • contribs) 18:53, 27 September 2009

Thanks for your input, anon. Nothing about the current article limits the subject to software, but you're probably right that the current table is about vendors that choose to sell software rather than a combined hardware and software solution. If we want that to be subject of the article, we just need to agree and move the article to have a more appropriate name. With respect to your other two points, the problem with allowing non-notable products to be in the list is simply that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. One bar that is frequently used to determine whether software merits inclusion in a list is whether the software or the software company is notable enough to have an article. Other criteria for inclusion may be reasonable, too. It's up to us to decide on what gets included. What would you suggest? What criteria, for instance, led you to remove KernSafe? Celestra (talk) 21:54, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

They had provided fake links. In the other words: put their company URL under other name product. It's cheating. Also there are companies doing hardware IP SAN, companies doing commercial software and companies doing shareware like stuff. I don't think it's a good reason to mix them in the same matrix...

I think we should talk about is it good to add hardware and IP SAN developers products after someone will do it. Actually it its possible to make another table on this page. The problem is that someone have some interests to delete StarWind from this page, without any explanation. Actually there was explanation - [COI], but why all the rest are left here then? I don`t think it`s really fear. I`m truthfully bellive that current version of table is good, and what is it need - adding more vendors, but not deleting.

The current table looks like what it is, a marketing product comparison table for some company. It needs to be changed to conform with the style of other, similar comparison articles. The core changes are spelled out in the first few posts from myself and Kbrose. I've proposed that the bar for inclusion in the table should be notability based on the company or product having an article. That is a common bar to use, but we can discuss other criteria. The suggestion to not have a criteria for inclusion is against WP policy. I should be able to start implementing the proposed changes to the article this weekend. It seems like the consensus is to limit the scope to iSCSI storage virtualization software. We haven't discussed the comparison criteria, but I'm thinking: storage capacity and performance, virtual device types and quantity of each, features about how the data is stored: RAID, compression, deduplication, encryption; features that act on the stored data: replication, snapshots, CDP, mirroring. Any other thoughts along those lines? Celestra (talk) 15:53, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Now the table names "Comparison of iSCSI targets", so every one who wishes are welcomed to add any comparison iSCSI table, kinda "Comparison Chart of hardware iSCSI targets", or to add any vendor to this page, or to merge software and hardware, but deleting of any vendor since now is the vandalism. Every vendor is highlighted in exact same way, so, my thought, there is no COI. AnatolyVilchinsky(talk|contribs)) —Preceding undated comment added 07:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC).

When you have to choose between what is best for the encyclopedia and what is best for your company, you have a conflict of interest. You can only edit articles related to your company if you act in a way which ignores what is best for your company and focuses on what is best for the encyclopedia. In the case of this article, that means you need to stop inserting your company back into the table. The criteria for inclusion in the table is having an article. That is frequently the criteria used in part to avoid having to argue notability separately on every article. We do not just include everything; Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of facts. There has been no vandalism here. Celestra (talk) 13:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

If all of you`re saying is truth, then why have you edited this article like this? It shows that you have an interest some competitors wasn`t in this table. If all of wikipedians will use your logic, than something like something new on wikipedia should exist on wikipedia, and all the information here should spinning around itself. I don`t think it`s really good idea. And if you do believe in what you are saying, then please edit page of Comparison of BitTorrent clients. AnatolyVilchinsky(talk|contribs))

I reverted your changes there, rather than removing all three redlinked columns and fixing the table structure, because I wanted to finish the conversation here on the talk page before diving in to the rework. The rework is still ahead of us; I have merely removed all three columns to help you understand that this isn't just about your company. My interest, when editing Wikipedia, is Wikipedia. The current table does not include any company I have ever worked for, nor am I interested in expanding the table to include any company I have ever worked for. Wikipedia is not a forum for marketing or advertisement. You and your fellow employees are welcome to edit here, but not to add SPAM about your company to every article that is slightly related. Celestra (talk) 16:13, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

May I wonder why is Datacore still here? I`m really upset by the things, happened here. AnatolyVilchinsky(talk|contribs)) —Preceding undated comment added 15:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC).

There is nothing to be upset about. Datacore had an article which was deleted a few days ago. I'll remove that column. I've been more busy this month than I had planned, but I should be able to implement the other changes within the next week or two. Celestra (talk) 19:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment that the points discussed in the chart might be a bit misleading. Some of the lines are not that useful (like Windows Volume Snapshot Service, or Microsoft Windows Server Core Support, as they are only applicable to some of the products. It feels to me like adding new lines like "Linux Powered" or "Harnessing the power of ZFS". Also, I know I'm not helping, but only seeing a *software* chart feels a bit uncomplete, lacking a hardware chart :/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.19.172.40 (talk) 19:45, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Vague features

I came to this article from the FreeNas article (please use that as an indication of my biases). I've only recently begun looking at iSCSI, for probably all the wrong reasons. (Take that as an indicator of my iSCSI knowledge/experience) I've often looked at the Comparison of file systems article, and assumed that this article would only be slightly worse than that one. (Wow, I'm putting my foot in my mouth.)

First the best thing about the current article is that the table (just barely) fits within my browser window. Scroll once, and I can see everything, not constantly having to scroll up&down or side-to-side.

What seams unusual (for Wikipedia) is that the products are across the top, with the features down the side, instead of vice-versa. For now it works, but could get worse if more products show up. It could be part of why it felt marketing focused before?

My current level of knowledge is that these products (targets) turn one or more hard disks into one or more LUNs. While an initiator takes a LUN and presents it as a hard disk to the other end's OS. So now to the "features":

Continuous Data Protection: How is this useful this far down the data stack? Between the application and the OS, sure I can see its uses, but here where there is no way to issue a "rollback to Tuesday" command?

CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol): isn't iSCSI at a higher layer than IP in the network stack, in order to use IP under it? CDP is layer 2 (like Ethernet). And even if it had some relevance to iSCSI, why would it be on the same line as Continuous Data Protection? Recommendation, remove "CDP" and its link, leaving just "Continuous Data Protection".

Snapshot: much like Continuous Data Protection, isn't this way too far down the stack? LUNs aren't filesystems. Mirroring and Replication: I assume this means it keeps duplicate data to avoid having to return an error up that stack. But shouldn't this be next to Software RAID to keep similar features together? And how can FreeNas have a no here with yes on RAID?

Thin Provisioning: Is this being thin "on the network" (reduced bandwidth), "to the disks" (less I/Os), or both? If it is "on the network" then is this part of the iSCSI specification, or does it require the initiator to support it this extension too? Are there multiple (incompatible?) extensions to do this, if so which does it use?

I/O caching: is red linked, but doesn't every product in this category need to have some cache to handle TCP(/IP)? Doesn't every storage device have some cache on it? Isn't the question (if useful) "what size is the cache?" and "Can I change it for my particular use case?"

CHAP: my biases say make it the short name, and keep it linked to the full name article.

SPTI: This appears to be a driver that allows (like others) Windows to talk to SCSI devices. I don't see a line for ASPI, nor are the drivers for *BSD, Mac, Linux listed. Who cares about the drive the client OS uses to talk to its initiator, we're talking about the target side here. It's the wrong level of abstraction anyway, a "target" talks iSCSI on one side, and SCSI/SATA/IDE/etc on the other.

RAM Disks: meaning I can use ramdisks and share them out over iSCSI? (Why would anyone write extra code to de-generalize and prevent that?) Or is it meant that the LUN can report itself as a ramdisk?

Virtual Optical Drive: This could be cool if it means what I want it to mean, but it links just to the Virtual drive article and becomes too vague to mean anything.

Next we have 3 MS "support": I think you change this to one line "Administration interfaces" and list those that can be used, like a built-in web interface or a CLI over SSH. If this article was long like the filsesystems one, the it might be its own table, with each interface its own line.

MPIO: you write out "Challenge-handshake authentication protocol" which no one says (except once in class), then shorten Multipath I/O into this? I hear people say Multiplath (3 syllables) MPIO (while shorter to type) is 4 syllables.

Windows Volume Snapshot Service - here is the point I realize part of the problem with the table is how it isn't clear which are iSCSI interface features, and which are the management/"Administration interfaces" features. Making much of what I've written above wrong. Not everything. The table needs a good sorting to put related features together.

Unlimited Network Interface Controller Support: What could this possibly mean? The link is only for the NIC, so that doesn't help. Is it the maximum number of NICs the software can support? (rename line, make data "unlimited" or "limited by hardware" instead of "yes") Is it the number of brands of NICs?

Storage limits: Amount of storage it holds (sum of disks) or reports (avail over iSCSI)? And this should be much closer to the top.

Missing "features": License, "currently supported", "latest release", if there are multiple versions of iSCSI then "supported iSCSI version(s)" or "extra RFCs implemented", if any hardware ones show up, then a "hardware/software" line is also needed. I'm also tempted by adding "price", but that probably isn't encyclopedic. "Max exportable LUNs"

(Actually, I was expecting to see a bunch of drive enclosures that used iSCSI instead of (?in addition to?) USB/eSATA here given the title.)

Also, the link for "AMI StorTrends" goes to American Megatrends, which hardly mentions these kind of storage products. I really don't know how Wikipedia policy fits correctly here, but having the AMI link where it does now and the StorTrends part link to their product homepage ( http://www.ami.com/stortrends/ or http://www.stortrends.com/ ) makes more sense to me. Maybe the chart needs a "homepage" line instead.

Finally, the references should probably be in the yes/no boxes, and not just at the top with the product name. "Yes as of v 2.3 ref:xx" or for hardware "in the 200 series ref:yy".

Thinking about it now, I wonder if I could compile a specific Linux kernel and that's be all I need software-wise. Also, I haven't checked history to see if it was there and removed, but doesn't Oracle/Sun's COMSTAR for (Open)Solaris also belong? Or the iSCSI property on ZFS?

This big block of text brought to you by:97.118.50.88 (talk) 08:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not an authority on FreeNAS, however I am fairly certain that any support it has for iSCSI comes from ZFS.

I do, however, know a bit about ZFS. A number of the things that are marked as "No" under FreeNAS are provided by ZFS.

RE: Snapshots

- The theoretical maximum number of snapshots is 2^64. (18 quintillion)

- http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbciq/index.html

RE: Mirroring and Replication

- "zfs send" and "zfs recieve" handle this nicely, for most any possible meaning this might have.

- http://www.markround.com/archives/38-ZFS-Replication.html

RE: Thin Provisioning - Wikipedia Page on it says "It relies on on-demand allocation of blocks of data"

- ZFS filesystems only use the amount of space of the files they contain, provisioning is automatic and ALWAYS thin.

- ZFS iSCSI shares generally use pre-allocated files called ZVols, which be expanded using "zfs set volumesize=<size>gb ZVOL_Name"

- http://oldmangriffous.blogspot.com/2009/01/esx-iscsi-zfs-provisioning-options.html

RE: Caching

- Read - ZFS uses ARC (adaptive replacement cache) in RAM, and supports L2ARC (Level 2 ARC) generally via SSDs or RAM devices.

- Write - ZFS supports using a ZIL (ZFS intent log) via SSDs or RAM storage devices to speed write performance.

- http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/test

There's significantly more of this but it's way past time for me to be asleep...

Other iSCSI targets:

NexentaStor is conspicuously missing. It supports a newer version of ZFS and is far more enterprise-capable/centric than FreeNAS.

Solaris, Solaris Express and OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana likewise support iSCSI and more features than FreeNAS.

Compellent (recently bought by Dell) offers software-based ZFS iSCSI for enterprise deployment.

Also if this is about "iSCSI targets", does it matter if the target is provided via hardware or software?

If it serves iSCSI, it's a target.

Kevin Trumbull (talk) 07:01, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Still a mess

Very incomplete and dated (even more so by now). For example, the chart says "software" targets. So those should be only products that are in fact software, that a customer installs on a computer with some disks to make it into a target. From what I can tell, StorTrends for example, is not a software products but a box ("appliance" or "solution" is the marketing buzzword). Their only software seems to be to manage their boxes, at least that is what it looks like. So I would have two sections, one for true software-only products, and another for the "appliance" vendors. And of course I would prefer prose, and full citations. Disclosure: I worked long ago for a vendor that sold iSCSI products at the time. W Nowicki (talk) 22:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

No value

This one is based on 2008 dated article so has no value. It does not reflect current stage of the things. IMHO should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by APS (Full Auto) (talk • contribs) 12:33, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

You are more than welcome to suggest a more recent article, so long as it's independent. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

agreed, software targets only

windows iscsi target now supports many things this article says it doesn't. Windows Storage Server 2012 is out. Also, I'm not sure, but I believe the zfs iscsi support is dependent on the opensolaris iscsi stack, COMSTAR — Preceding unsigned comment added by Barrysmoke (talk • contribs) 17:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

This currrently isn't a list of iSCSI targets

Rather it is a list of things that build on top of iSCSI targets - e.g. Openfiler isn't the iSCSI target, rather it is a product that provides access to (by default) the IET iSCSI target...

I would have expected the list to mention:

• COMSTAR (Solaris/OpenSolaris)
• IET (Linux)
• LIO (Linux)
• SCST (Linux)
• STGT (Linux)
• tgt (Linux)
• FreeBSD (Native from 10.0)
• istgt (Various but started on FreeBSD)
• NetBSD
• Windows (Native)

And so on...

80.194.75.34 (talk) 12:30, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Full Rewrite or a lazy translation, maybe ?

q: this page seems to be ~~ 6 years old. which for any software seems to be really NOT GOOD. if we are that lazy, would it be OK to take Wiki article in other language (say, Russian) and simply translate it? 80.232.244.199 (talk) 10:57, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

The article was created in 2009 and last edited in August 2013, so I don't understand your comment about being six years old, but I do agree the current article is not great. Is the Russian article more encyclopedic or does it just have more vendors? Older and ... well older (talk) 13:46, 9 June 2014 (UTC)