Some more evidence of quickening of the FC pace......
techweb.com
Interoperability Issues Plague SANs -- Like many young
technologies, SANs must learn how to play nicely with
others
Rick Cook
Storage area networks (SANs) are a hot new technology that offer a major
opportunity for VARs. But they are also so new that they are plagued by
interoperability issues.
The SAN business is growing rapidly-and so is VARs' share of it.
Approximately one-quarter of the SAN business is already handled by VARs
(the rest is almost entirely in the hands of manufacturers' direct sales forces
and systems integrators), and that percentage will increase significantly, says
Doug Ingraham, director of strategic planning at Storage Technology Corp.
(StorageTek), a storage hardware manufacturer. "We'll probably ship twice as
many SAN ports this quarter as in the last quarter," he says.but not to 3com!
What's more, SANs are so complex that even when the interoperability issues
are ironed out, the specialized knowledge needed to successfully set up a
SAN virtually guarantees they will remain VAR territory for years to come.
SAN Deja Vu
If you've been around the industry long enough, problems with SANs will
sound all too familiar. In fact, they are similar to the ones that occurred when
LANs were first introduced. Same with SCSI devices.
But the problems with SANs are much more complex. Although a few
manufacturers offer SCSI-based SANs, most SANs use Fibre Channel as
their communications medium. Fibre Channel itself is still fairly new, and the
notion of setting up a SAN-type pool of storage devices is newer still. Add to
that the desire for new functions, such as shared storage among multiple
operating systems, and it's easy to see why it is taking time to iron out the
interoperability issues.
"We're dealing with things that go beyond traditional network thinking," says
Bill North, director of storage network programs for Veritas Corp., a maker
of storage management software. "In client-server networking, you usually had
a one-to-one correspondence between the logical server and the physical
server. That's not necessarily true with SAN. There's all kinds of combinations
that make the one-to-one model of physical topology to logical entities difficult
to apply."
What's more, this isn't helped by the usual dose of what James Staten, a
senior industry analyst at San Jose market researcher Dataquest Inc., calls
"infighting and flag-bearing" among computer manufacturers as they try to
steer the development of SAN integration in their separate ways.
The interoperability problems, he says, are not so much in the physical Fibre
Channel layer as in the things that sit on top of it. "The majority of the
incompatibility is in the drivers, networking protocols and storage management
software layers," Staten explains.
SANs Sans Standards
In light of those interoperability problems, SAN manufacturers are working
hard to try to identify and solve them. One result is a series of informal
plugfests where manufacturers of SAN equipment get together-usually at a
neutral site-and see whether they can make their equipment interoperate.
More formally, most of the main SAN players have established their own test
facilities to determine what works with what and why.
"Many of the vendors have evolved what we call interoperability test labs,"
says Susun Hosford, worldwide channel sales manager for Vixel Corp., a
maker of Fibre Channel products for the SAN market. "At the Vixel
verification lab, we conduct our own verification of our products, as well as
test hardware and software together in combinations we think are typical of
VAR installations."
Because, as StorageTek's Ingraham points out, "we have products coming out
instead of standards," the SAN market is developing as a series of alliances,
each one typically including one or more major computer manufacturers,
several makers of Fibre Channel and other LAN products, and a storage
company or two. Some companies are members of more than one alliance,
and all the alliances are working to make sure their members' products
interoperate.
"Every major vendor out there has some type of framework or alliance," says
Brian Reed, Vixel's vice president of marketing. "We are a part of all of
those." Besides the alliances, SAN vendors are making other efforts to ease
the burden on VARs by providing tested SAN solutions they can copy.
One offering, from Fibre Channel switch maker Brocade Communications
Systems Inc., is Fabric 2000, a series of "cookbooks" that offer precise
details on installing particular SAN solutions, including the models of hardware
and the revision numbers of the necessary drivers. "We've tested the
configuration and provided very detailed application notes so VARs can take
this to users in a very replicable way," says Peter Tarrant, vice president of
marketing and business development at Brocade. Tarrant says Fabric 2000
has the potential to cut the time to market for a SAN by roughly 60 days and
reduce the cost of the installation by approximately one-third.
Compaq Computer Corp. offers a similar service with a configurator on its
Web site. It asks VARs questions about customer needs and then presents
them with a solution, right down to the model numbers. "We want to make
sure qualification is not an issue as long as you're willing to buy configured
systems based on the qualifications we've done," says Jeffrey Schnable,
director of marketing at Compaq. "Our goal is to make sure the
interoperability works and leave the configuration and customization to the
VAR."
---
SANs tips
Before setting up a SAN for a customer, here are a few things to keep in
mind:
- Pick a vendor family you are comfortable with and stick with its solution.
The market is too chaotic for most VARs to support multiple families of SAN
solutions.
- As much as possible, sell SANs configurations that have been tested and
certified by the vendors.
- SANs are complex and usually large-scale solutions. Training is vital for
SAN VARs.
- Be prepared to educate your customer about the time and effort it will take
to install a SAN.
---
Quick Scan
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. San Jose, Calif. (888) 276-2233,
www.brocade.com
Compaq Computer Corp. Houston, Texas (800) 345-1518,
www.compaq.com/storageworks
Storage Technology Corp. Louisville, Colo. (800) 785-2217,
www.storagetek.com
Veritas Software Corp. Mountain View, Calif. (800)258-8649,
www.veritas.com
Vixel Corp. Bothell, Wash.(425) 806-5509,
www.vixel.com
Looks like this article was based on info fromn just one of the alliances.....I wonder what the other group(s)will have to say.... |
