Unless you’re “in the know”, terms like “layer 2″ can seem mysterious, making it all the more plausible when someone touts the benefits. It seems logical: “Bare-metal” communication must be better, faster, and cheaper than higher-level “everything over IP” approaches, right? But it’s not quite that simple.

A number of switch vendors have announced the 10Gb Ethernet is the THING for 2010. Really?

“Maximizing Hyper-V iSCSI Performance with Microsoft and Intel” might sound like another “blah blah” marketing piece, but a little birdy tells me that this webcast will drop a bombshell about iSCSI performance.

Along with many tidbits about storage advances in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, this WinHEC presentation by Microsoft’s Suzanne Morgan demonstrated that the combination of the Windows iSCSI Initiator and NetApp FAS 3070 filer could saturate a 10 Gb Ethernet link. How many other storage arrays can do that?