RE: NAS <---> SAN = NTAP <---> BRCD
And to complicate matters a little bit more, Network Appliance and Brocade Communications have teamed up to integrate the benefits of both NAS and SAN.
BB
Here's the release (which I believe I already posted earlier this week):
Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leading provider of dedicated data access appliances and BROCADE Communications Systems, Inc., (BROCADE©) the leading supplier of Fibre Channel switches, announced a technology partnership to develop storage networking architectures integrating the benefits of both storage area networks (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS) environments.
Both SAN and NAS address the growing complexity of managing the explosive growth of data in today's enterprise environments. In order to reduce this complexity, Network Appliance and BROCADE have partnered to create a single, high performance storage solution for managing and sharing enterprise data over an integrated SAN and NAS architecture, using common protocols for data access.
The new, combined SAN and NAS architecture will support increased enterprise scalability and utilize existing industry-standards like TCP/IP and Fibre Channel. Data sharing, storage management, backup and network administration will become simpler and more effective, leading to reductions in total cost of ownership.
"Combining the benefits of SAN and NAS architectures will create powerful storage solutions for even the most complex corporate data center requirements," said Kevin Reinis, director of storage marketing, Dell Enterprise Systems Group. "Our commitment to both the SAN and NAS architectures positions us to bring the value of Dell's direct business model to the solutions we provide for the distributed and centralized storage requirements of our most demanding customers."
Figure 1 describes two application servers, App #1 and #2, connected to a SAN and NAS network. "The problem with deploying multiple application servers is that each one has its own complex data storage needs. By unifying SAN and NAS, and separating the data from the application, Network Appliance minimizes that inherent complexity in a consolidated storage networking solution," said Charlie Simmons, vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "By partnering with Brocade and incorporating their Fibre Channel switching technology, we can break down the barriers of separate SAN and NAS storage."
"The partnership between Network Appliance and BROCADE will help our mutual customers benefit from the combination of storage area networking and network-attached storage topologies," said Peter Tarrant, vice president of marketing and business development, BROCADE. "As the number one supplier of standards-based fibre channel fabric switches to the SAN market, we are pleased to work with Network Appliance to bring the combined power of SAN and NAS to the corporate data center."
OEM Agreement
Also under today's agreement, NetApp plans to OEM BROCADE's SilkWorm© family of Fibre Channel switches and software to develop storage networking solutions that include SAN and NAS technology for enabling powerful storage infrastructures for today's corporate networks. NetApp plans to offer this storage networking solution to its customers.
NAS and SAN Definitions
A Storage Area Network, SAN, is a high-speed network that establishes a direct connection between storage devices and servers. This approach enables storage and tape subsystems to be connected remotely from the server.
Network Attached Storage, NAS, utilizes a TCP/IP network using industry standard protocols like NFS, HTTP and CIFS (for UNIX, Internet, and Windows© environments, respectively). NAS architectures are designed to accelerate application performance, giving users shared data access in heterogeneous environments. NAS lets administrators consolidate storage from multiple desktop and server systems into a centrally managed pool of data.
About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
BROCADE is the leading supplier of Fibre Channel fabric solutions, which provide the intelligent backbone for Storage Area Networks |
