Voltaire has contributed its iSER protocol sources to the Linux community. iSER is a new IETF standard extension to iSCSI that supports multiple RDMA-based transports like Infiniband and Ethernet RDMA.

Besides boosting iSCSI performance, the protocol is supposed to leverage its management capabilities, enabling heterogeneous storage environments to utilize a single protocol and management infrastructure.

Combined with Infiniband, iSER is said to be well suited for enterprise and technical computing grids that require high-performance clustering and storage.

Voltaire's multi-protocol switches use iSER for high-performance connectivity between Infiniband, Fibre Channel storage and iSCSI/TCP networks, and to enable server and storage virtualization.

Voltaire said its iSER contribution to Linux underscores its commitment to drive the adoption of open Infiniband-based solutions for server, network and storage networking and virtualizing enterprise grid and high-performance computing applications.

Voltaire has contributed the Data Mover implementation to the Linux iSCSI Open Source project and the iSER transport implementation to OpenIB.org, the open source Infiniband project.

Separately, Voltaire launched a Native Infiniband Storage Developer Kit for storage OEMs.

The kit is designed to let storage vendors and solution providers develop high-performance storage solutions based on iSER over Infiniband.

The kit includes a set of Infiniband host channel adapters, switch, software stack, the iSER initiator and iSER target software.