Both Vigil and Ross agree, though, that the religious wars are missing the point: the real unifier in the converged data center is a lossless version of Ethernet with flow control capabilities, which is being standardized now in the IEEE's Data Center Bridging .

"We violently agree on the 'over Ethernet' part," Vigil says. "Whether customers deploy iSCSI over that or FCoE is the next choice."

And the Data Center Bridging enhancements to Ethernet will benefit iSCSI just as much as FCoE in making the converged fabric lossless, low latency and more reliable, Vigil says.

"The difference is, (the DCB enhancements) are required for FCoE whereas for iSCSI you have flexibility in that they're not required -- but they do help in terms of providing more predictable performance in converged infrastructures," he says.

"We always find it a little challenging when people say it's one or the other -- no it isn't," Cisco's Ross says. "It's making sure that you have the right fabric in place that's going to be able to support any choice that you want and that you may have in your environment already."