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To: johndelvecchio who wrote (35718)	11/30/2000 4:47:46 PM
From: darryl25	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

John, Currently there are two proposed methods of providing Storage over IP: Native SCSI over IP networks (Such as Nishan is attempting) and Tunneling of Fibre Channel over IP. Nishan is taking the proprietary route and creating there own method of Native Scsi over IP, SoIP. There is also a standard being developed, iSCSI, led by Cisco and IBM, to standardize SCSI over IP. This standard is backed by Agilent, HP, EMC and others. I believe the standard is in working draft form. I believe Adaptec is proposing a solution as well. Issues with Scsi over IP are mainly due to performance as you point out. Fibre Channel and GigE both have transfer rates of 1 Gb/s. FC will soon have 2 Gb/s. Both FC and Gig E are working on 10Gb/s. Transfer rates being equal now and in the future, Storage over IP has extra overhead due TCP. The TCP/IP stack is too software intensive to rival the performance of Fibre Channel. There are efforts being made to implement the TCP/IP stack in hardware to increase the performance so that SCSI over IP can rival the performance of FC networks. As far as the issue you suggest of Ethernet not being able to support block transfers ala SCSI, this is not an Ethernet issue, as Ethernet is simply the Medium Access Protocol. Support of block transfers would be handled at a higher level. FC tunneling over Ethernet is being pushed by the SAN companies. Gadzoox and Lucent have partnered. Crossroads demonstrated FC over GigE at Comdex. biz.yahoo.com CNT and Nortel have also partnered. cnt.com The tunneling method basically consists of encapsulating FC packets (called frames in the FC world) into IP packets, and sent over Ethernet to another box which unencapsulates them and sends them to the remote FC network. At present time, this is the more viable solution, as it does not require a change in OS behavior, or device interface. To implement Native Scsi over IP, Storage devices must also be changed to interface with the new protocol. Another drawback of iSCSI or SoIP is that the overall performance of the IP network will be degraded, due to the storage running over it. Assuming companies are utilizing there existing infrastructure, this will affect both the performance of storage traffic and normal IP traffic. A method that might be used would be to separate the two different types of traffic on the network, so they do not effect each other. I am much more knowledgeable of Fibre Channel then I am of the Ethernet/IP world, so I may not be giving TCP/IP a fair assesment. There are some big players behind iSCSI On another note, IP is able to be carried on FC networks similar to SCSI. FC is simply a transport system for upper layer protocols to be carried on. Emulex and Qlogic currently make Host Bus Adapters that can be configured to operate as network cards, sending IP on top of FC. Therefore a host with a FC interface can send IP packets to another FC host who will extract the IP packets from the FC frames. Therefore, we have IP connectivity over a FC network. A main benefit of FC is that flow control and acknowledgements are handled at a low layer in hardware as opposed to TCP which is in software. This saves alot of overhead associated with CPU intesive processing of TCP. In the future, I see a FC host sending IP packets over a Fibre Channel network to a "FC to Ethernet" router which will translate the FC frames to Ethernet and send them along the Ethernet network. With regards to NTAP and the NAS/SAN debate, I'm curious if NTAP has thought of providing a FC interface to their filers. With IP over FC capability, the filer could talk NFS over a FC network to a SAN host, thus NTAP would play in both games, SAN and NAS. Please forgive this ramble from a first time poster. I found the thread about 5 months ago and am half way through TRFM. I feel extremely fortunate to have wandered upon a forum of such intelligent folks and I look forward to contributing. Darryl

To: johndelvecchio who wrote (35718)	11/30/2000 5:30:24 PM
From: Triffin	Respond to of 54805

SAN software Nov. 30, 2000 (Computer Reseller News - CMP via COMTEX) -- Irvine, Calif. - The complexity of Fibre Channel, along with interoperability issues between products from multiple vendors, has the industry scrambling for alternatives in building storage area networks (SANs) and for different ways to connect existing SANs into larger networks. IP and storage vendors and a host of start-ups are leading the charge, leveraging current IP infrastructures to build and/or connect storage networks. Integrators, however, say they have mixed feelings about using IP for storage, as they balance the ease of working with IP with possible performance issues. Talk about storage over IP is little more than a reaction from IP product vendors who need something to move into the SAN arena, says Dan Carson, vice president of marketing at Open Systems Solutions. Increasing bandwidth via alternatives such as Gigabit Ethernet and faster protocols-long touted by vendors as the solution for larger, better SANs-won't help solve the problem, says Randy Kerns, an analyst at the Evaluator Group. Clocking in at 27 Mbytes per second, Gigabit Ethernet has a slower throughput than Fibre Channel's 90 MBps, he says. Another major problem with moving data over IP is CPU overhead, Kerns says. To move data over IP, it has to be converted into IP packets. Packets that are missing or come in out of sequence affect bandwidth utilization. "It can get very bad, very fast," he says. Vendors, however, say such issues can be resolved. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is working on a standard for both Fibre Channel over IP and iSCSI. Vendors expect a draft specification for the standards by mid-2001, with final specifications a year later. Adaptec plans to offer iSCSI host-bus adapters and bridges compatible to the preliminary specifications by mid-2001, with firmware that allows upgrades to the final standards. Cisco and Brocade are working together on projects involving Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and Fibre Channel over IP, says Mark Cree, general manager of Cisco's Storage Router Business Unit. Plus, with the technology it received from its July acquisition of NuSpeed, Cree says Cisco is also preparing an iSCSI offering to be released early next year. While iSCSI initially will not have the performance of Fibre Channel, it will be more than adequate for the 75 percent of customers needing access to data, Cree says. Brocade is also working on a plug-in to Cisco's Catalyst 6000 router that would allow Fibre Channel signals to be carried over IP. It is expected to be released in the first half of 2001. Other storage players are also grappling with the SAN conundrum. Vixel is making a Fibre Channel switch model for Lucent's OptiStar EdgeSwitch, which is expected to be available early next year. In addition Entrada Networks is expected to unveil at Comdex/Fall an IP router to carry Fibre Channel data. It will connect to WAN interfaces ranging from T3 to OC-48. LuxN is producing the third generation of its DWDM product, which allows Fibre channel to be combined with Gigabit Ethernet or SONET signals. Still, even with the new technology being planned, storage integrators are not convinced IP is the future of SANs. A grand convergence is coming between storage and networking, says Derek Gamradt, vice president of engineering and CTO at Englewood, Colo.-based StorNet. Networking people will come to view storage equipment as customer premises equipment-just as storage people do today-whereas storage people will see networking as just another part of the storage network cloud, he says. "Think of a wall," says Gamradt. "On one side is the storage structure, with SCSI, Fibre Channel, SANs, etc. On the other side is the metro area network space. . . . If you want to play, you have to think on both sides of the wall." Gamradt doesn't know which side of the wall will fare better from the convergence. "Storage folks tend to be more performance-oriented, while network folks tend to be connectivity-oriented. . . . It will be easier for storage guys to get into networking. We don't have to re-invent that space," he says. --- STORAGE SERVES Top Five STORAGE Management Software Vendors Based On 1999 License Sales COMPANY - PERCENT EMC - 18.2% IBM - 17.3% Computer Associates - 16.4% Veritas Software - 12.1% BMC Software -5.6% Total market for new license sales in 1999 = $4.2 billion Source: Gartner crn.com EOM ------------------------------------------------------ Jim in CT ..

To: johndelvecchio who wrote (35718)	11/30/2000 9:55:09 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

I think the big opportunity could be in software too that makes all of this stuff work. But, I am not sure. John, there is an evolving standard called Direct Attached File System (DAFS) using Virtural Interface (VI) that addresses all of the issues you listed about storage over IP. DAFS/VI will reside on the network interface card and exchange storage data with other DAFS/VI agents over an IP network. It will bypass the TCP/IP stack, avoid the overhead of packetizing/depacketizing and bypass the OS file systems on either end. The result will be a very efficient means for storage systems to communicate over 802.3-based or Infiniband or FC networks. NTAP will be delivering products based on this new capability late in 2001. They are a founder of the DAFS coalition and own considerable IPR in VI through their purchase of a small company this year.