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Acts as systems integrator in storage-area-network alliances
-- StorageTek leads SAN push
Loring Wirbel
Louisville, Colo. - Storage Technology Corp. is positioning itself to become a
force in storage-area networks, linking up with several software developers and
Fibre Channel switch specialists in an effort to take the pain out of SAN for end
users. The company's "SANaps" thrust will place it in the position of systems
integrator, working with its partners to create full-blown SAN applications.
StorageTek said it launched its SANaps initiative to ease the transition to
networked storage. Don Kleinschnitz, the company's vice president of strategic
marketing for SANs, said the short-term effort will center on accomplishing
backup without interrupts to the LAN infrastructure.
Though some software specialists-including SANaps partner Legato Systems
Inc.-have built a business around backup over the LAN, Kleinschnitz said that
Legato has been key in developing dynamic allocation of storage devices using
Fibre Channel and storage-management protocols, hence performing all backup
duties in a pure SAN environment. Veritas Software Corp. is another SANaps
partner, as are switch specialists like Brocade Communication Systems Inc. and
JNI Corp.
StorageTek will treat all backup SANaps as a systems-integration duty, offering
a full-access hub, bridge, software, tape library and services and maintenance
suite for a single price. For entry-level systems, the fee will be around $150,000.
Later this year, StorageTek will launch SANaps for capacity expansion, making
it possible to add heterogeneous storage devices without bringing the network
down; and distance extension, which will take remote storage resources to a
common SAN-first over an extended-reach Fibre Channel system in a campus
environment and later over WAN protocols for metropolitan and regional
storage networks.
Kleinschnitz said that the Vista Interoperability Labs will become a de facto
certification facility for SAN developers over the next few months. In fact, he
said, interest in the lab is so high that StorageTek now has to prioritize all the
projects proposed for it.
Meanwhile, StorageTek, Legato and several other systems vendors in the
Storage Networking Industry Alliance (SNIA) held a special conference last
week to reiterate the multiple fronts in which the SNIA is working to make
SANs easier to configure. Computer makers like Compaq Computer Corp. and
Hewlett-Packard Co. are eager for SNIA to show progress in SANs,
particularly with the recent defection of 3Com Corp. from SAN interests. But
Darren Thomas, vice president of the multivendor storage division at Compaq,
was quick to admit that SNIA needs more participation from the giants in
internetworking.
SNIA is not a standards body, but works with the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) and American National Standards Institute on protocols for
storage. The SNIA helps develop standard profiles for how these emerging
standards are implemented.
EMC Corp.-which has worked with the FibreAlliance to promote its own
SNMP management-information base to the IETF-and Sun Microsystems Inc.,
which has promoted the StorageX initiative for SAN frameworks, played
prominent roles in the April 5 SNIA conference. Both companies reiterated that
their independent efforts were subsidiary to the joint standards SNIA was trying
to forge.
Walt Hinton, chief strategist at StorageTek, said SNIA still needs to develop a
consistent front to deal with end users of RAID farms and similar storage
networks. Customers like these are confused, he said, with the variety of SAN
coalitions and ad hoc implementation efforts in the industry.
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EMC is so strong in storage that none of the server vendors want anything to
do with it," said James Staten, senior analyst at Dataquest, San Jose, Calif.
"They don't want EMC to have a say in how their servers are deployed."
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The need for high availability is going to smaller and smaller systems, and the
need for availability on high-end systems is growing,'' says Bob McGraw,
worldwide market development manager for Hewlett-Packard's enterprise
storage business unit. "You can't even have planned downtime any longer.''
Jeffrey Schnabel, director of marketing for the multivendor storage business unit
at Compaq, agrees. "There is zero tolerance for downtime,'' Schnabel says. "I
can buy books at six or seven different Web sites. If I can't get a book at
Amazon.com, I can get to Barnes and Noble in about five seconds.'' |
