Craig,
<<<I agree with you 100% on an intellectual basis, but the inescapable fact is that proprietary clustering solutions are in use today, and continue to be developed, despite the availability of Fibre Channel. I don't understand why that is, and it doesn't seem to make much sense to me, but that's the way it appears.>>>
'Clustering of servers' is not new. It's the way of life for enterprise computing. All major players have their own method of adding more computing power by doing some form of clustering. But, the options are limited because of hardware and operating systems they used. These hardware and operating systems were designed quite some time ago. Based on needs through the years, additional support such as clustering of servers together through modification of existing operating systems, through addition of hardware intelligence. The point is that there are limits these modifications can do to an original design which was designed to support a single system and a single set of channels. These same players recognized the need for a robust system to allow 'all devices(computers, storage, workstations, printers, etc) to communicate through the same media at 'channel speed'. FC was the choice and a standard was created late 1980's. Here we are now in late 1990's starting to see a wide spread of support from different companies. In this regard, FC is much like IP protocol. The protocol is not new, just that everybody coming to the party at the same time makes it attractive. We should expect continued development and use of proprietary 'clustering' technology for the forseeable future. It would not, however, IMHO, have the same capability like FC from all the ones I've seen. Another thing to keep in mind, other than Sequent(half-baked SAN if you ask me), others just announced they will offer SAN/FC. They are not selling any yet. The critical mass has not been reached yet. Only the promise and 'hype' has to some degree. Like you said, Ancor will continue to be speculative for quite some time. But, worrying about other clustering technology which will take over FC IMO is unfound. They are here first and it is FC trying to take over these 'proprietary clustering technology'.
KJ |
