ISCSI performance for mobile appliances using intermediate target storage

Abstract

Looking at the present demand for mobile services we can predict that there will be an explosive growth in the usage of mobile appliances in the future. But these mobile appliances suffer from significant problems related to storage restrictions and limited computing resources. However, the increased demand for mobile services has resulted in wide spread research to provide remote storage service for mobile appliance using iSCSI. The iSCSI protocol enables the block level I/O and high-capacity storage service over general IP networks. But iSCSI, in a client-server environment is very sensitive to latency (delay time) and when applied to the mobile appliance results in a rapid performance degradation when the mobile appliance (client) moves far away from the storage server. In this research, authors describe a new availability remote storage system called an intermediate storage server, which localizes the iSCSI target to the mobile appliance. Thus, when the client moves far away from the primary storage server will automatically get connected to the intermediate storage server rather than trying to establish connection with the primary storage server. This reduces the latency or delay time involved in contacting and accessing the resources from the storage server.