Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : McData (MCDT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gus who wrote (78)	9/25/2000 2:53:30 AM
From: Gus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 234

SANs continuing progress By Barb Goldworm Network World Storage in the Enterprise Newsletter, 08/21/00 Continuing on last week's theme of evolving views about storage-area networks, here are some other areas in which we have been seeing progress. One of the key factors that has been consistent in our research during the last 12 months is *the importance of high availability as a driver in the move towards SANs.* While marketing efforts initially were focused on LAN-free backup, our research has shown that backup is much less of a driving factor than high availability. Given that, it is important to understand how successful SANs really are in achieving high availability. For the most part, IT organizations moving to SANs have high expectations for availability. Many are not willing to accept any downtime (39% in our Enterprise Management Associates [EMA] latest study). More than 72% anticipate 99.7% availability or better. As a side note, in most research that EMA has done in areas of enterprise management, a high percentage of respondents don't seem to understand the translation from percent availability to actual outage time. This is demonstrated in the inconsistent answers provided. Users frequently ask for "five nines" (99.999%) of availability and then follow that with expectations of something far worse than that (for example, 30 minutes per week of downtime, which translates to 99.7%; 99.999% translates to 6 seconds per week). If expectations are high, how are SANs really doing? Actual downtime experienced by this same group was very low, with 56% reporting no downtime at all. *With 39% expecting no downtime, and 56% experiencing none, actual availability is exceeding expectations. That trend continues through all levels of expectations.* In an industry where high expectations are not usually met, this gives SANs something to tout. Another area that SANs have taken heat over in the past is the inability for heterogeneous environments to coexist. Early SANs had many interoperability problems, even in mainly homogeneous environments, so mixing operating systems was generally not something users undertook. Our recent research shows positive changes in this area. For the sample of users who had implemented SANs, more than half of the servers in their SANs were running Windows NT, with 36% running some flavor of Unix. Thirty percent of these SANs will include two or more operating systems within the next 24 months, typically a version of Windows and a version of Unix. This heterogeneous mixing is another sign of the beginning of maturity in SAN implementations. Users are generally still encountering interoperability issues in implementation, but increasingly less than in the past. When asked what technical difficulties have been experienced or anticipated, 59% responded with interoperability and/or integration issues, while 31% indicated they had no problems with interoperability. Numerous factors are at work to continue improvements in this area. The ongoing work of organizations such as the Storage Network Industry Association and the Fibre Channel Industry Association continue to help make interoperability improvements. In addition, numerous vendors have established interoperability labs, spending tremendous amounts of money on hardware, software and facilities to test variations of configurations and provide certification. Overall, we're seeing continuing progress in the SAN space, in terms of user understanding and actual experience. *Products are maturing, the whole market is maturing and users are maturing.* nwfusion.com