SAN-In-a-Box: Pop-Up Storage --
Vendors help the channel whip up
storage solutions using SAN
'cookbooks'
CMP Media Inc. - Saturday, January 22, 2000
Jan. 21, 2000 (VARBusiness - CMP via COMTEX) -- Storage area networks (SANs)
are new territory for the channel, but that is changing rapidly as vendors begin to
focus on VARs and systems integrators. In particular, vendors are offering
prepackaged solutions to overcome SAN incompatibilities.
"We had our early deployments in the spring of 1999," says Peter Tarrant, vice
president of marketing and business development at Brocade Communications
Systems Inc., a maker of Fibre Channel products. "The volume of installations really
picked up in the third quarter. SANs are now over 10 percent of our revenue as of last
quarter. It could grow to 30 or 40 percent of our business over time."
At the end of 1999, Brocade had 26 partners in its SAN program and is looking to
expand that number considerably this year.
Vendors are taking a range of approaches to providing prepackaged SAN solutions
to VARs. At one end of the spectrum is Compaq Computer Corp., which is literally
providing a "SAN in a box" with a line of ProLiant server bundles for 150, 400 or
1,000 users. Each bundle consists of the server, RAID array and the necessary
Fibre Channel connectivity to set up a preconfigured SAN.
At the other end is Brocade's Solutionware program, which consists of a series of
reference configurations of hardware and software that Brocade has tested on its
own. "We have now delivered over 15 of these solutions to our partners," says
Tarrant, with more coming all the time.
Not surprisingly, VARs and integrators have taken different approaches to SANs, as
well. Some of them rely more heavily on the vendor-provided solution than others.
For example, Integrated Systems Technologies Inc. (IST), a $100-million-a-year
integrator headquartered in Novi, Mich., uses Xiotech Corp.'s Magnitude
prepackaged SAN for some customers, even through the company has been
installing custom-designed SANs since 1998-starting with a 40-TB monster using
Fibre Channel fabric switches.
Richard Merchant, director of enterprise solutions at IST, says at first he wasn't
interested in Xiotech's SAN. He didn't see the need for another storage solution.
But he changed his mind when he saw Xiotech's offering. "What we noticed right
away was the ability to put one of these in, configure it and have the customer up
and running in a short time," Merchant says. "We saw that Magnitude fit into a
smaller customer's application because of the way it was priced and expanded. You
buy it, and when you want to add disk [storage], we send out the disk in a box and
the customer plugs it in."
That's important because in the engineering market IST serves, there were many
companies looking to consolidate storage.
"We had a lot of customers in the engineering marketplace whose data was growing
and who needed to centralize their data resources," Merchant says.
Further, many of those customers are now mixed NT and Unix operations. "We liked
the ability to go to the customer and say, 'I want to separate your storage from your
processing to give you a balanced infrastructure,'" Merchant adds. "We wanted to
get something that might shorten the sales cycle and be a stronger product that was
not as risky to install."
IST values the Xiotech Magnitude SAN approach in part because it allows for fast,
flexible installations. The Xiotech SAN can support up to eight servers without a
Fibre Channel switch. "If it involves less than eight servers, we can typically get up
and running in a couple of days or less," Merchant says.
Including installation, the first Xiotech installation had a sell cycle of roughly three
months; Merchant expects to have that down to less than two months on the SANs
the company is currently installing. By contrast, the first 40-TB SAN installation IST
completed took approximately six months. Although Merchant points out that isn't
an apples-to-apples comparison, because the first SAN was so much bigger, the
fact remains that using a prepackaged solution considerably simplifies the process.
Another approach is typified by Datalink Corp., which has tended to use Brocade's
Solutionware as a starting point. "We haven't followed any cookbook," says Scott
Robinson, vice president of engineering at the $115-million-a-year Minneapolis
integrator. "We've used [Brocade's] information in terms of validation and
interoperability, but each one of our SANs has been custom."
Recipe For SAN Success
In SANs, one size does not fit all. Customers are likely to have unique requirements the VARs must
meet, and no prepackaged solution can cover all the contingencies. However, as Brocade's Tarrant
points out: "If [the prepackaged solution] is only 90 percent of the solution, they're still 90 percent of the
way there. The result might not be an exact copy of the software, but it's 80 or 90 percent relevant to
them, so the benefit is reduced time to market and accelerated installation."
In one case, Datalink used Brocade's Solutionware to develop a SAN for a customer doing a large-scale
migration to NT. "They had a RAID array on every server to start out with, and they had dozens of
servers, " Robinson says. "It was becoming unmanageable." Datalink consolidated that into three large
RAID systems using Hitachi storage and attached three NT servers through a meshed connection of
Brocade switches.
"We had a long-standing relationship with that customer," Robinson adds. "From the time we introduced
them to the solution until we deployed it, it was probably six to nine months." That included the time it
took to educate the customer on the advantages of a SAN and to design and test the custom layout.
Datalink did extensive testing and preconfigured some of the system at its laboratory in Atlanta before
installing it at the customer's site. "We worked with our partners closely and tracked things like revision
level of the drivers carefully," Robinson says. "We were working with technology that was evolving as we
were deploying it. By the time we actually deployed the solution, things were stable enough that, while
we had some issues, they weren't insurmountable."
Quick Scan
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. San Jose (408) 487-8000,
www.brocade.com
Compaq Computer Corp. Houston (281) 370-0670, www.compaq.com
Xiotech Corp. Eden Prairie, Minn. (612) 828-5980, www.xiotech.com
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