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

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (378)	2/23/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: Douglas Nordgren	Respond to of 4808

ITEM: PCWeek Labs Reviews CPQ Fibre Channel: [Note: It looks like the FC-AL box is Vixel's w/GBIC, Adapters are EMLX LightPulse] zdnet.com Compaq Computer Corp.'s Fibre Channel Storage System brings the speed and flexibility of Fibre Channel storage to PC systems, providing an infrastructure that supports large-scale data storage and server clustering. PC Week Labs' tests of the product, which is slated to ship next month, show that the new technology works, but there's room for improvement. Fibre Channel may be the technology of the future, but to accommodate today's SCSI-based systems, the Fibre Channel Storage System uses conventional SCSI drives, limiting its overall performance. To get the most out of the Fibre Channel Storage System, companies must have powerful servers and an abundance of RAID arrays. And although prices have not been announced, migrating from SCSI to Fibre Channel won't be cheap. For sites with pressing storage needs, however, the Fibre Channel Storage System--the first PC-based Fibre Channel solution we've tested--could be just the thing. In terms of storage capacity per PCI slot, the scalability of the system is unmatched, and it offers a level of flexibility that SCSI storage technology simply cannot match. The Fibre Channel Storage System logged impressive performance in multiple-array tests, but didn't do as well in a single-array configuration. The system is thus suitable for large shops that must manage enormous amounts of data storage or run large-scale applications. Pricey proposition Compaq officials estimated that upgrading the PC Week Labs' SCSI-based system--a ProLiant 7000 server with four 200MHz Pentium Pro CPUs and four storage arrays--to the Fibre Channel Storage System would cost approximately $33,000. That price included multimode cabling and the storage system's main components: a Fibre Channel Host Adapter Card, a Fibre Channel Loop Expansion Module and four Fibre Channel arrays. Installing the storage system was simple. We gently snapped the Fibre Host Controller Card into a server PCI slot and loaded the device drivers, and our server was ready to connect to the Fibre Channel network. The Fibre Channel array, which looks like a conventional SCSI disk array, can hold 12 1-inch disks or eight 1.6-inch disks and includes a Fibre Channel interface. Compaq's array management software let us configure an elaborate RAID array using a simple point-and-click GUI management tool. The tool automatically detected our Fibre Channel arrays and flashed activation lights on the array as we configured it. The Loop Expansion Module has seven ports with which we linked the server's Fibre Host Controller to Fibre Channel arrays. To link the arrays to the Host Controller Card and Loop Expansion Module, we plugged Multimode Fibre Channel cables and Gigabit Interface Converter modules into our Host Controller card and Fibre Channel array interface. Fibre Channel Storage System servers and disk arrays are connected by high-speed Fibre Channel serial links. However, the array uses conventional Ultra Wide SCSI to link the SCSI drives. Doing so lets companies move their SCSI drives into the disk rack in the Fibre Channel storage array. Using a single host controller in a server, we easily connected to and managed four Fibre Channel arrays containing a total of 27 SCSI disks. Using the maximum configuration of disks, it is possible to connect six Fibre Channel arrays to one server PCI slot and manage 72 SCSI drives carrying as much as 873GB of storage. In comparison, using a single Compaq Smart 2 SCSI controller in the same ProLiant, we could only hook up two disk enclosures with a total of 24 disks. However, when we ran the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation's NetBench test to compare network throughput, the Fibre Channel-equipped server using a single disk array ran more slowly than a SCSI-equipped server. A couple of explanations are possible. Unlike a SCSI controller, which is attached to the motherboard of the server and close to the CPU, the Fibre Channel controller is in the Fibre Channel Loop Expansion Module--which can be as much as 500 meters away over fiber-optic cable. This can cause latency. Another possible reason for the performance degradation is the higher overhead generated by Fibre Channel networking.