Dale said second-generation iSCSI hardware initiators add support for active-active multi-pathing configurations, boot-from-SAN capability, and improved CPU offload. In addition, second-generation iSCSI software initiators improve the support of high-availability environments with multi-pathing, fail-over, and host cluster services support.

The biggest storage array in the world, which is currently under construction, will have capacity equivalent to a stack of iPods three times the height of the Empire State Building. Interestingly, it will be managed with common Ethernet networking tools.

The SAN will support a project called the Human Speechome Project -- for the MIT Media Lab -which is expected to archive and search 1.4 petabytes of data over three years.

The SAN is being built from commodity hardware and uses a 10GbE IP network for data transfer between the backend SAN and hundreds of servers.

Computing infrastructure is expected to be composed of more than 300 Hammer Z-Rack storage enclosures from Bell Microproducts, about 3000 SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard disk drives from Seagate Technology and more than 100 10GbE switches and 400 blade processors from Marvell Technology Group.