Installation guide

Release Notes for Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router Release 3.5.3

OL-6542-01

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

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

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

IP hosts

Cisco SN 5428

Storage access is managed

in the SN 5428.

85885

FC storage devices

IP hosts

The SN 5428

presents each IP host

as an FC host to the

storage array.

Cisco SN 5428

85886

Intelligent storage

array

Storage access is

managed in the

storage array.