Hardware-Based iSCSI
iSCSI + TOE + NIC = “iSCSI HBA”
iSCSI Offload Engine
(SOE)
TCP Offload Engine
(TOE)
SCSI Offload Engine (SOE)
offloads additional SCSI work
from the host to the HBA
iSCSI HBA
with TOE and SOE
Host
Moving SCSI processing functions into silicon further improves performance:
TCP processing as well as SCSI processing are performed by the
adapter.
These implementations use ASICs instead of firmware for increased
speed.
Disadvantages of this approach might include:
Higher cost
Need to replace HBAs as iSCSI implementations evolve