In enterprise storage architectures, Storage Area Networks (SANs) deliver block-level access to host operating systems and hypervisors. When deploying a SAN using standard Ethernet switching infrastructure, the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol is the primary, standard choice.
iSCSI encapsulates SCSI command sets, status responses, and data blocks directly inside standard TCP/IP packets. This design enables organizations to leverage existing 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, or 100GbE enterprise Ethernet switches and structured network cabling without the expense and complexity of deploying dedicated Fibre Channel (FC) fabric switches and optical host bus adapters (HBAs). NVMe/FC (Non-Volatile Memory Express over Fibre Channel) provides ultra-low-latency block transport, but it requires dedicated Fibre Channel switches and SAN fabrics rather than standard Ethernet switches. CIFS (SMB) is a file-sharing NAS protocol, and S3 is an HTTP-based object storage protocol; neither is a SAN block storage protocol.
[Reference: NetApp Data Administrator, ONTAP – Storage Protocols and Connectivity; SAN Configuration Guide; IP SAN Architecture and iSCSI Deployment in ONTAP 9., , ===============, ]
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