Server virtualization is an ever more important tool for reducing cost, increasing availability, and enhancing business agility. But for many organizations, the savings that come from server consolidation are the primary reason for server virtualization.

Many of virtualization's additional benefits-- including built-in, cost-effective high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR)-- require external shared storage with a comprehensive feature set to support HA and DR. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to spend the savings from server virtualization on inefficient storage systems. Because they overcome many of the cost and management limitations of traditional SANs, iSCSI SANs are becoming the preferred choice to support virtualized environments.