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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: straight life who wrote (3181)	4/25/2001 2:54:02 PM
From: Greg Hull	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4808

tekboy posted this message on the NTAP thread: Message 15715512 A friend just called me all worried, because he had a long conversation with a serious and well-connected techie who was very bullish on storage but down on NTAP. Apparently the guy said that the EMCers are quite confident now that, with all their effort over the last few years on the "NTAP Killer" project, they will be able to hold off the NTAP challenge and ultimately squeeze it off. What EMC is really terrified by, the guy continued, was not NTAP but rather Scale Eight, a private company whose technology was deeply threatening. I realize that the EMC/NTAP wars will continue and partisans of each are unlikely to convince opponents, at least until we all see how things play out over the next few quarters/years. But I'm curious to hear what people think about Scale Eight: s8.com tekboy@nomoregreedleft,justfear.com ============================================= If you go to the Scale Eight web site you can link to a pdf ( s8.com ) that describes ISI (Internet Storage Infrastructure) to replace legacy storage solutions such as NAS, SAN, and SSP. From my cursory reading I was unable to appreciate the distictions from SSP. It seems like another outsourced storage model. From the Technology Overview: s8.com "why Scale Eight is different Conventional file servers today are typically Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems, which provide a local storage system—an island of storage—directly accessible to clients and servers on a single Local Area Network (LAN). By contrast, the Scale EightSM MediaStore service provides a global storage infrastructure that is directly accessible by servers on any LAN, or by any authorized user at a Web browser. To utilize the Scale Eight service, a small (1U) appliance called a Scale EightTM MediaPort is installed on any LAN where hosts require direct file access. The MediaPort appears on the network as a standard Network File System/Common Internet File System (NFS/CIFS) file server but with unlimited capacity. The MediaPort caches frequently accessed files, and transparently stores and retrieves files from centralized Scale EightSM StorageCenters. The MediaPort exports a unique Scale EightSM Global File System (8FS). With 8FS, companies can deploy MediaPorts across many geographically dispersed sites, and enable hosts on any of those LANs to directly access the same file system. This unique, powerful capability enables companies to store only a single copy of each file, while enabling any authorized internal or external application to access that file. The StorageCenters are accessed via the WAN. Scale Eight has deployed four StorageCenters around the world—two in the United States (California and Virginia), as well as one each in London and Tokyo—and utilizes patent-pending technology to virtualize these StorageCenters into a single global storage system. The StorageCenters utilize parallel systems technology to harness the power of thousands of disks and hundreds of servers to provide massively scalable storage capacity, as well as massive capacity for directly serving files to the WAN. Files stored with Scale Eight can be accessed not only via MediaPorts, but also via innovative Scale EightSM 8RLs (8RL). Generated automatically for each file stored with Scale Eight, 8RLs are unique, authenticated URLs, which enable StorageCenters to serve files directly to a Web browser. By utilizing 8RLs, companies can use Scale Eight for large-scale Internet file serving, or for serving files directly to mobile users. Scale Eight 8RLs eliminate the need for companies to deploy the Web server farms and high capacity networking equipment that is otherwise required for large-scale file serving. Scale Eight provides each customer with a Web-based management platform called Scale EightSM ServiceView. ServiceView provides companies with comprehensive capabilities for monitoring and controlling their Scale Eight service, and can provide customers with greater control than what is typically achieved with an in-house infrastructure. Unlike conventional storage management products that enable monitoring and management of an island of storage, ServiceView provides a single point of control for an entire global infrastructure, including both storage and Internet file serving. a secure, carrier-class service The Scale Eight service is built for continuous availability, with no single point of failure in the Scale Eight service network, sophisticated monitoring and management tools, and automated failover throughout. Scale Eight commits to 99.99% service availability in the standard Service Level Agreement. Scale Eight recognizes the value of digital assets, and the confidentiality requirements of sensitive corporate documents. Thus Scale Eight has placed substantial emphasis on utilization of advanced security technologies and practices, and provides state-of-the-art Internet security. " Greg