Ken, and all,
From a technical standpoint, the Brocade announcement is a mixture of hype and fact. (As are most press releases, including Ancor's.)
Without getting a look at a product brochure, this is what I think the Brocade announcement means:
Fibre Channel is a growing market segment, especially in the storage area. As Brocade correctly points out, Fibre Channel is scalable and resilient. Brocade also states that unlike a Fibre Channel Hub, their switch (and Ancor's) can "sustain a one-gigabit-per-second full-duplex transfer rate from each port." They also acknowledge that the scalable fabric can be used to "cluster servers and storage, provide increased accessibility to large databases, and execute data-dependent applications including data warehousing and imaging."
The hype part begins when Brocade starts talking like they are the ONLY ones delivering a Fibre Channel solution. "Brocade is the only company positioned to provide the critical element of this separate server-storage area network -- a switching Fabric based on Fibre Channel's ANSI specification." It almost sounds like AR wrote that line. <g>
The other thing that is hype is their contention that their "superior performance is further enhanced by its use of Fibre Channel Class 2 and 3 connectionless services. SilkWorm does not have to establish and maintain a connection during data transmissions." What they don't tell us is that there are applications where you WANT to maintain a dedicated connection (Class 1). Since they don't support Class 1, they are downplaying its importance. Shrewd marketing, but not the whole truth.
At $1,500 per port (16-ports), that is no hype. The Ancor rumor mill has placed Ancor's switch in that area for price, although their switch will support all Classes fully optimized. Clearly, this is a shot across the bow of Ancor. We should soon see what Ancor's response will be.
Craig |
