Because NAS and iSCSI transmit storage traffic over Ethernet, there was initially some confusion about the technologies.

From an application perspective, Dale said iSCSI-based SAN storage looks just like DAS and so it works transparently with all applications.

"NAS will usually work fine, but since it is a different paradigm it generally needs to be supported by the operating system vendor and qualified by the application vendor," he said.

Since snapshot functionality is so common with iSCSI, most deployments back up from a recent point-in-time copy, which eliminates the traditional backup window.

But second-generation iSCSI solutions will expand on these capabilities.