IP Steals Spotlight at Storage Show in Phoenix
Many of the country's largest systems vendors and storage technology specialists have converged at the Storage Networking World 2003 event in Phoenix this week to announce new wares, or demonstrate how their existing products work with vital emerging standards.
New products introduced
Not surprisingly, many of the new products concern IP-based storage, and
consist of iSCSI
In a demonstration of how major vendors are designing products that
accommodate the two main connectivity standards, Cisco's MDS 9000 IP Storage
Services Module, FCIP Port Adapter for the Cisco 7200 and Cisco 7400 Series
and SN 5428-2 Storage Router connect to Fibre Channel-attached devices using
the newer iSCSI protocol or mainstay Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) protocol.
For San Jose, Calif.'s Cisco, the move is a considerable upgrade to its
storage networking suite because it offers customers the ability to choose
from any combination of Fibre Channel, iSCSI and FCIP technologies to build
or expand their SANs. This choice is something analysts have been stressing
as iSCSI has been finding its way toward maturity.
More broadly, IP storage networking makes it easier and less expensive for
organizations to deploy storage area networks (SANs) for e-mail, database,
disaster recovery, LAN-free backup, consolidation and other storage
applications because it uses standard Ethernet components. IP SANs use
Ethernet components to reduce costs of networked storage.
"IP storage networking technologies take advantage of connectivity provided
by IP to extend the value and utility of Fibre Channel SANs," said James
Opfer, Research VP with Gartner Dataquest. "iSCSI offers very favorable
incremental cost for each additional server connected to a SAN, especially
for small servers where the cost of Fibre Channel host bus adapters is
prohibitive. FCIP is a SAN extension technology that allow users to
interconnect SANs well beyond the reach of pure Fibre Channel, making it
useful for business continuity applications."
Frequent Cisco partner Adaptec
The Adaptec iSCSI Adapters 7211C and 7211F feature an Adaptec TCP/IP offload
technology that moves processing of TCP/IP packets out of the operating
system and implements it in hardware on the card to reduce CPU utilization.
The adapters support Windows 2000, Windows NT and Redhat Linux and support
for copper (7211C) and fiber (7211F) media.
With the help of Network Appliance
The ASA-7211C and ASA-7211F retail for $660 and $715, respectively. The
cards are now shipping to distributors and resellers and are under
evaluation by major OEMs.
Also, Adaptec rival QLogic
Interoperability demonstrations galore
SNW wouldn't be right if it didn't feature a dizzying number of standards
interoperability demonstrations from vendors, their partners and standards
groups, such as the Storage Networking
Industry Association (SNIA).
SNIA Monday said storage networking vendors of the SNIA Supported Solutions
Forum (SSF) will embark on the largest demonstration of interoperable Fibre
Channel switches at the show this week.
The demonstration will consist of heterogeneous storage area networks (SANs)
built with switches and storage devices from SNIA SSF members including
Cisco, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, INRANGE Technologies, McDATA,
QLogic and Sun Microsystems. The availability of the previewed multivendor
SAN switch products is slated for this summer.
Analysts argue switch interoperability is a key factor in building and
managing heterogeneous SANs because it enables IT staffs to interconnect
devices from different storage vendors within the same fabric. End users
will also be able to build on that by building "edge products" such as IP
storage routers and blade servers that host embedded Fibre Channel switches.
Phil Mills, chairman of the SNIA Supported Solutions Forum, described the
multivendor switch demo is an examples of vendors who have put aside their
competitiveness to work for the good of the customer and the industry."
While multivendor switching is important, it's hardly the only demonstration
at SNW. Many industry experts will no doubt anxiously await Storage
Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S, Monday unveiled three IP storage networking products that will
allow customers to expand their Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs)
to additional servers and applications within data centers across large
distances.
joined the SNW party Monday, too, releasing what it claims are
the first ASIC-based IP storage networking host bus adapters built on iSCSI.
The Milpitas, Calif. firm's goal is to help midsize companies migrate from
direct-attached storage to network storage.
, Adaptec has conducted beta deployments of IP SAN
products for such customers as Trimble, Sandia Labs and the University of
Michigan. The adapters support e-mail, database, CRM and ERP, consolidation,
disaster recovery and LAN-free backup on Windows and Linux platforms.
Monday unveiled 4-gigabit-per-second Fibre Channel products to ease the
industry transition to 10 gigabit architecture.