Intel Releases Open Source Software To Help Enable Development Of New Internet Storage Solutions
intel.com
Chairs Industry Group to Help Accelerate the Adoption of Future Storage Technologies
Palm Desert, Calif., April 9, 2001 - Today at the Storage Networking World Conference and Expo, Intel Corporation released software to the open source community, enabling organizations to more easily build storage systems that use common Ethernet components. Intel also announced that it is chairing a multi-vendor group to help accelerate the deployment of next generation standards that will extend Ethernet to include networked storage.
Intel's open source reference software will help storage device vendors quickly develop products, such as switches, routers and adapters, which are compliant with the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) specification. The iSCSI specification is under development by the Internet Engineering Task Force and outlines a next generation storage protocol that carries storage traffic over existing Ethernet networks. Previously, sending disk blocks over a network required dedicated storage devices, which are more expensive.
iSCSI-enabled storage devices facilitate adding storage to any location on an Ethernet network with less complexity and expense. Also, as an extension of an Ethernet network, network administrators can use existing utilities to manage the entire network, including storage farms.
The iSCSI software reference implementation was developed by Intel Labs and is available free of charge at sourceforge.net.
Also at the conference, Intel announced that it is leading the iSCSI Group, a new group within the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) IP Storage Forum. The new group will evangelize and help accelerate the deployment of the iSCSI specification. More information on the subcommittee is available at www.snia.org.
"With the rapid increase of electronically generated information, organizations today are buried under mountains of data, creating a growing need for storage space. But, that data still needs to be readily accessible from anywhere in the organization for analysis, inquiries and customer service," said Ahmad Zamer, chairman of the iSCSI Group and senior product line marketing manager in Intel's LAN Access Division. "By extending Ethernet to enable the transfer of storage data, iSCSI enables the creation of cost-effective and high-performance storage farms without sacrificing easy access to data."
To highlight the progress made in the development of the iSCSI protocol, Intel, together with Ciprico Inc*, Mountain View Data Inc* and NetConvergence Inc*, conducted the first public demonstration of a storage area network using the iSCSI protocol to pass large blocks of data over an Ethernet local area network. The demonstration also showed that when using the iSCSI protocol, an interoperable storage area network could be built with devices from multiple vendors, as opposed to proprietary solutions that lock customers into a single vendor for all of their storage area network equipment.
Intel is a building block provider to the storage industry, delivering I/O processors, controllers for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) devices and bridges to server and storage device manufacturers. In addition, companies including Cisco, IBM and Network Appliance use high-speed Gigabit Ethernet adapters from Intel in storage devices.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
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