DataDirect
Networks Announces Plug and Play SAN
LOS
ANGELES - July 23, 2002 - DataDirect Networks announced that they have
begun production of a plug and play appliance that allows IT professionals to
create affordable and scalable SANs for workgroup and departmental use.
The S2A 3000 Silicon Storage Appliance is a simple to deploy, easy to
manage and affordable storage network appliance that allows companies to achieve
application performance gains, cost-effective scalability and simplified
management with an appliance-enabled SAN.
Based on DataDirect Networks' proven Silicon Storage Appliance
technology, S2A 3000 Silicon Storage Appliances supply an aggregate bandwidth up
to 800 megabytes per second to workgroups typically consisting of one to
twenty-four Linux, Unix, Windows NT/2000, Sun, AIX, Macintosh and SGI compute
nodes. The S2A 3000 can easily manage storage network environments ranging in
capacity from 500 GB to 14 Terabytes. Deploying a workgroup SAN using the S2A
3000 is virtually plug and play, with users easily connecting servers and
workstations into one side of the 1U high appliance and commodity-priced JBOD
disks into the other side.
System configuration and network
virtualization is done in a quick, three-step process. Scaling of the storage
network and activation of additional software modules (included in the S2A 3000)
can be quickly and non-disruptively activated with a software key. In addition,
S2A 3000 appliances can also be deployed in a "couplet" fashion to
bring highly available, redundant solutions to businesses. Announced for orders
in April, the S2A 3000 has generated substantial interest among decision makers
in the company's core vertical markets that include rich media content creation
and delivery, high performance computing deployments in broadcasting, production
and post production facilities, government agencies, life sciences, oil and gas,
and imaging.
"Companies want the benefits that SANs can bring,
but have been held back by complexity and management costs associated with
building first generation SANs - until now," said Brad Winett, vice
president, business development, DataDirect Networks. S2A 3000 Silicon Storage
Appliance-based solutions (that include appliance plus storage, rack and
enclosures) start from under $40,000 and are available immediately.
...DataDirect
Networks profile
EMC reports revenue 31% down on Q2 last year
Hopkinton,
Mass.- July 18, 2002 - EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) today reported
financial results for the second quarter of 2002, reflecting strong sequential
growth in revenue from the company's industry-leading portfolio of storage
software products and continued progress in lowering EMC's cost structure.
Revenue for the second quarter was $1.39 billion, an increase of 7%
compared to the $1.30 billion reported for the first quarter of 2002. Net loss
for the second quarter, excluding the after-tax effects of a $25 million
reversal to the third-quarter 2001 restructuring charge, was $11 million or
$0.01 per diluted share, compared with a first-quarter 2002 net loss of $97
million or $0.04 per diluted share, also excluding the after-tax effects of a
$28 million reversal to the third-quarter 2001 restructuring charge.
Consolidated net income for the second quarter, including the after-tax benefit
of the $25 million reversal, was nearly $1 million or $0.00 per share.
Joe
Tucci, EMC's President and CEO, said, "Economic conditions and customer
spending patterns in the second quarter were very similar to the first quarter.
Most large corporations continue to delay major IT projects, generally limiting
their purchases to deployments that provide a rapid return on their investment.
EMC's competitive advantage in this tight-fisted environment comes from being
the only company 100% dedicated to comprehensive networked storage solutions.
Software revenue grew 14% compared with the first quarter, a clear sign that
customers are embracing our AutoIS open software strategy. The other major
factors in our improved sequential performance were better international results
and our tenacious attack on costs. We believe we gained market share in both
hardware and software during the second quarter."
...EMC profile
Editor's
comments:- in Q2 2001, EMC's revenue was $2.02 billion. In Q2 2001, EMC's
revenue was $2.15 billion. So if you compare today's reported results of $1.39
billion they don't look as good as the sentiments in the rest of this press
release might suggest. Is EMC right in believing it gained market share in
hardware? Well everyone has a right to their own opinion, but I think they're
wrong on that one. Gaining market share compared with one or two ancient
competitors is not the same as gaining share in the whole market which consists
of hundreds of RAID, SAN and NAS oems.
EMC and Gartner Invent New Storage Jargon
Editor - July
15, 2002 - EMC and Gartner have been busily inventing new
acronyms for the network storage market, in case you didn't think there were
enough already.
Will they catch on? In the end, you decide. I'm a
poor judge and was a slow convert to SAN. These terms below occurred in a recent
edition of "EMC
Perspectives", and I don't recall having seen them before.
- SAM - Storage Area Management
- FAS - Fabric Attached Storage conveniently bundles
together the ideas of SAN and NAS, or Networked Storage
If you're cynical you may think this kind of inventiveness is
designed to breathe "new" life into old products. OK, it works for
cars. But you wouldn't buy a storage system just because it had a new label or
color would you? There is a serious and higher marketing purpose at work here.
If you can define an acronym which defines a market niche, then you can also
issue press releases to say that your company is the market leader in that
niche. Here are some example, but you can think of your own.
- EAS - EMC Attached Storage. That enables you to claim
99.9% market share in the EAS storage market... ...if you're EMC.
But this idea can be extended to other fields. So we get:-
- MDSP - Mouse Driven Storage Portal. By the way did you
know that STORAGEsearch.com has
100% market share in the storage portal market in the MDSP category. That's
important information if you're an advertiser.
We
collect all the new terms seen in these pages in
Megabyte's Storage
Glossary. ...EMC
profile, ...GartnerGroup
profile
QLogic Delivers SAN Support for Intel Itanium 2
based Platforms
ALISO VIEJO,
Calif.- July 8, 2002 - QLogic Corp. today announced full support for
the new Intel® Itanium® 2 processor and architecture in Windows
and Linux environments.
Drivers are available for QLogic Fibre
Channel and SCSI controller chips and HBAs, including QLogic's new ISP2312 Fibre
Channel chip. The ISP2312 is the processor platform that powers "Fibre
Down" (Fibre Channel connectivity integrated into server system
motherboards) applications and the new QLogic SANblade QLA2340 family of
high-performance HBAs.
"Numerous enterprise SAN applications will
benefit from the powerful combination of the Itanium 2 processor and QLogic's
I/O solutions," said Mike Graf, Product Line Manager for Intel's Itanium
processor family. "The Intel Itanium 2 processor has gained overwhelming
industry support from leading technology companies like QLogic. OEM and
enterprises customers can depend on this support and a strong, long-term roadmap
that emphasizes generation-to-generation compatibility to maximize their
investments."
The Itanium 2 processor uses an Explicitly Parallel Instruction
Computing (EPIC)-based design that enables new levels of compute parallelism and
scalability for large workloads. In addition it employs an Innovative machine
check architecture and extensive ECC coverage to deliver enterprise-class
reliability and availability for high up-time environments. QLogic has been
involved since the early development of the Intel Itanium architecture,
supplying hardware and software during design and testing. ...QLogic profile
Editor's
notes:- Like the
Death Star
in Star Wars,
Itanium
2 based servers running Linux have the potential to be "Sun killers",
potentially providing 50% higher performance than Sun's top of the range
1.05GHz SPARC processors. However, Sun's skills at OS tweaks could cut into
that theoretical hardware advantage. Intel, meanwhile will have to rely on Red
Hat and other 3rd party OS developers to extract the most performance from its
64 bit hardware.
See also my recent article -
How Long Can Sun
Stand the Heat in the Server Benchmark Wars?
LSI Logic host bus adapters certified
interoperable with Brocade Silkworm 12000 switch
MILPITAS,
Calif.- June 26, 2002 - LSI Logic announced today that its Fibre Channel
host bus adapters, the dual-channel LSI44929O and quad-channel ITI7004G2-LC,
have been verified by Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. as
interoperable with the new SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch and Brocade-based
SAN infrastructure in testing conducted through the Brocade Fabric Aware™
Program
The program is a comprehensive testing and configuration initiative
designed to foster end-to-end SAN interoperability in multi-vendor Brocade-based
SAN environments. LSI Logic's complete line of storage products has Fabric Aware
certification with multiple generations of Brocade products.
"We are pleased that LSI Logic's Fusion-MPT™ based Fibre
Channel HBAs have successfully completed the Fabric Aware testing with Brocade
fabric switches in heterogeneous SAN environments," said Jay Kidd, Brocade
vice president of product marketing. "Storage area networks are being
deployed worldwide at a rapid rate as a scalable, high performance networking
foundation for storage environments. End users are implementing large fabric
SANs comprising hundreds of storage subsystems, servers, and networking
technologies, all from multiple vendors. The Fabric Aware program is an example
of our continued investment in delivering end-to-end SAN interoperability to our
partners and their customers."
...Brocade profile,
...list
of all Brocade Fabric Aware™ partners,
...LSI Logic profile
Imperial Technology Announces SANaccess Software
for LUN Security in SANs
EL
SEGUNDO, Calif.- June 25, 2002 - Imperial Technology today announced
the availability of SANaccess software for LUN security in SANs.
SANaccess is a data security feature that creates access protection for data
volumes residing on an Imperial File Cache Accelerator when used in a SAN.
Previously only available only in the
SANaccelerator™,
SANaccess is now available as an optional feature for all MegaRam™ 2000 and
5000 products.
"SANs are designed to allow access to common storage resources,
but sharing storage resources in a SAN without any security exposes data to
every server in the SAN," said Robert David president and CEO of Imperial. "In
a properly implemented SAN, each server is only aware of storage resources to
which it has a right to access. Without a comprehensive data security feature
enabled, sharing storage resources within a heterogeneous SAN can compromise
data security."
Every Imperial File Cache Accelerator is designed to emulate one or
more conventional disk drives. This capability allows the Imperial MegaRam to
connect to a wide variety of server types and operating systems without special
drivers. Imperial's administration toolset simplifies partitioning the File
Cache Accelerator into as many as 64 Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs), making each
LUN appear as a disk drive residing in the SAN. Emulating 64 LUNs allows the
MegaRam to service application needs to 64 different servers in the SAN
simultaneously. Operationally, SANaccess LUN security enables UNIX operating
systems and Windows-based operating systems to simultaneously share access to
MegaRam File Cache Accelerators in both small and large SAN environments.
...Imperial
Technology profile
Nexsan Extends InfiniSAN ATAboy2 into SAN Arena
With New Fibre Channel Connectivity Option
WOODLAND HILLS,
Calif. - June 17, 2002 - Nexsan Technologies today unleashed an
enhanced version of its InfiniSAN ATAboy2 that dramatically boosts throughput,
includes 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity and opens up the unmatched value
of the company's latest storage solution to the full range of SAN applications.
The ATAboy2F, Nexsan's newest addition to its award-winning product
line, couples the industry-leading affordability (less than 1 cent per megabyte)
and performance of the InfiniSAN ATAboy2 platform with the speed and flexibility
of 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity to deliver a multi-Terabyte SAN-ready
storage solution designed to meet the demands of high-bandwidth, data-intensive
applications such as broadcast, pre-press and other graphic arts and digital
content creation environments.
ATAboy2F is designed to handle the full range of Fibre Channel
configurations, including support for fabric login as well as Arbitrated Loop.
Incorporating dual Small form-factor pluggable (SFP) 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel
ports with backward compatibility for 1-Gigabit Fibre Channel hardware, the
ATAboy2F delivers data throughput of 400 MB/s peak and 170 MB/s sustained RAID 5
reads with 25,000 IOPS performance. Nexsan delivers this enterprise-level
performance in a compact 3U rack mount unit with up to 1.68 Terabytes of
SAN-ready capacity, enough for more than 100 hours of digital video.
...Nexsan Technologies
profile |
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SANaccelerator™ from
Imperial
Technology |
|
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MetaStor E4600, 40TB SAN
from
LSI Logic Storage Systems |
|
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InfiniSAN™ Disk to disk
backup
distributed by
Rave |
|
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RamSan-210: World's Fastest
Storage
from Texas Memory Systems |
|
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Solid State Nitro-eSAN
from
Curtis |
|
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Buy LSI Logic FC
Adapters
in Europe from Selectronix |
|
Nibble:-
2 + 2 = 5 - Storage Jargon and the BIG Idea Behind SAN
The
storage industry, which was once so sleepy and slow, woke up in 1998 and started
to invent dozens of new jargon terms to describe storage products. If you're
coming across these for the first time they can be really confusing.
But
when you realise that "DAS" is Directly Attached Storage - and merely
a new term for connecting your storage directly to your computer (which you've
been doing for the last 20 years without even realising that your were doing the
DAS thing) then you realise that maybe all you need is a dictionary for some of
these terms, and that really, there are very few new ideas to worry about.
The
only really new idea is that the storage system does not have to connect to the
server by a short umbilical cord, or sit in the same box, or come from the same
company.
Storage boxes now come with network ports. That's the BIG
idea behind SAN. That's all there is to it... honest.
Of course there
are some consequences, and that's what all the fuss is about. Things like:- you
may decide that you prefer the storage boxes made by someone else (not your
server supplier), and that you can now do a lot of systems administration stuff,
like backups, without having having to walk around your building to change
dozens of tapes. So you may have to take up jogging to compensate for all the
miles you no longer have to walk.
Or another way of getting this
exercise, on company time, is to go to lots of
STORAGE trade shows &
conferences to see what other people are saying, and avoid the risk of
buying products which sound good today, but end up like 8 track cartridges.
(If you're too young to understand that ancient reference - it was a technical
dead-end for in-car sound entertainment back in the 1970's - possibly before you
were born).
If our mouse brains can handle this SAN stuff then it
should be a lot easier for you. So put away those headache pills, and stop
worrying. Mind you, all we do is report about it... Unlike you, we don't have
to make anything work. So maybe those headache pills should be kept handy in
your drawer, just in case the sales person exaggerated a bit about that 5
minutes plug and play from your web browser.
For a list of current
storage jargon take a look at Megabyte's
Glossary. | |
