Data server admins are always on the lookout for changes in the industry that will help do their job better, keep their data safer, and speed up file access. The old standbys in recent years have been iSCSI and Fibre Channel. These high-speed technologies have been good matches for storage applications like database use and management where use can be intense. They can, however, be quite costly to keep up and running properly and they require a lot of care and maintenance. A new alternative to iSCSI and Fibre Channel is ATA-Over-Ethernet (AoE).
This open-source connectionless storage networking protocol was originally developed in 2003 by California company, Coraid. It connects servers and storage in a less complex fashion than iSCSI and Fibre Channel. The AoE Layer 2 design works to find the most efficient way to transmit raw disk I/O commands over raw Ethernet. The more connects that are added, the more bandwidth that is made available, the more resilient the pathways. It is important to note that AoE is not iSCSI. The only commonality between AoE and iSCSI is that they both use Ethernet for transport. iSCSI uses TCP/IP at Layer 4 and AoE Layer 2.