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# Understanding iSCSI

Unisphere provides monitoring and management for Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) directors, iSCSI ports, iSCSI endpoints, IP interfaces, and IP routes.

iSCSI is a protocol that uses the TCP to transport SCSI commands, enabling the use of the existing TCP/IP networking infrastructure as a SAN. As with SCSI over Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI presents SCSI endpoints and devices to iSCSI initiators (requesters). Unlike NAS, which presents devices at the file level, iSCSI makes block devices available from the network. Block devices are presented across an IP network to your local system, and can be consumed in the same way as any other block storage device.

The iSCSI changes address the market needs originating from cloud or service provider space, where a slice of infrastructure, for example, computes, network and storage, is assigned to different users (tenants). Control and isolation of resources in this environment is achieved by the iSCSI changes. Also, more traditional IT enterprise environments also benefit from this new functionality. The changes also provide greater scalability and security.