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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kelly Igou who wrote (20833)	2/19/1999 6:11:00 PM
From: Greg Hull	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29386

<<Interesting piece. Didn't see any mention of switches, though.>> Here's an interesting piece that does mention switches. informationweek.com February 15, 1999 Network Storage: Freedom Vs. Performance Storage area networks show promise, but may not be for everyone By Martin J. Garvey <<Finally, next year--when the software that allows interoperability is available and reliable--customers can invest in Fibre Channel switches.>> <<EMC invests in the interoperability required to support disparate components of a SAN. James Rothnie, senior VP and chief marketing technical officer for EMC, says his company will have SAN solutions firmly in place by the second quarter, with the effective deployment of a switched Fibre Channel architecture, support for OS/390, multiple versions of Unix, and Windows NT, and management software to keep it all under control. NT servers, according to Rothnie, can be a problem. "Each NT server assumes everything it connects to belongs to it, so if multiple NT servers share the same storage, they clobber each other." He says EMC provides a seamless solution. "We create security controls within the storage," says Rothnie, "so each NT server sees only the portions of data that the administrator assigns to it.">> <<Jeff Allen, VP of marketing for Sun Storage, ... the interconnect is just the plumbing, and a lot has to be done about what customers are going to run across the pipes. "The storage networking must still be solved--moving the data, controlling the data, sharing the data, managing the data," he says. Allen adds that even the switched interconnect is immature, and only possible in single-vendor solutions such as EMC's, because storage systems and switches must know so much about each other.>> <<HP is focused on a SAN solution that incorporates best-of-breed components, all managed by the big vendor. HP's Scott says the company will support IBM's AIX and Sun's Solaris operating systems in a SAN by year's end, and fold them into an infrastructure that includes a wide range of interconnect components, including hubs, switches, tape libraries, disparate server support, management software, and services guaranteeing support.>> <<Derrington of Meta Group is willing to endorse such focused application activity for SANs in 1999, though these plans don't include interoperability yet. "Switches from Ancor, Brocade, and McData will come into play by the second or third quarters," he says. "Customers can cascade switches for tape libraries and storage systems over long distances.">> <<IBM won't be left out of the SAN market, but says only the first part of its three-part strategy is attainable in 1999; the interconnect of hubs and switches is expected by year's end.>> <<Finally, cost can be a major hurdle, because Fibre Channel hubs and switches are two to three times as expensive as the LAN 100Base-T switches that IS executives are used to paying for.>>