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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TechMkt who wrote (118256)	4/17/1999 12:15:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Fez - There are two major architectures for multi-vendor storage. One, which has been around for a while, is referred to as network attached storage. In this architecture, intelligent storage systems attach to the network which joins servers and clients together, and looks like a standard file system to the various systems which use the storage. This is fairly "dumb" technology - the servers and clients still have to do all of the work to manage the storage, do backups, etc. And all of the traffic for the data goes over the LAN, which increases traffic. It is possible to have a separate LAN just for storage, which helps somewhat, but the packet traffic, and the internal overhead for each system which uses that storage, is still there. This is the architecture which EMC used to use for their multi-vendor architecture, along with another architecture which simply allowed a big central storage box to be "divided up" to provide directly connected storage for a number of systems. It is also the design used by Network Appliance. In the last few years, this architecture has been replaced by a much more integrated and high performance architecture pioneered by IBM and CPQ called Storage Area Network, or SAN. A SAN requires significantly more intelligence in the subsystems but has huge performance benefits. SANs can move data around internally for backup or to improve access times, all without any loading of the systems which use the storage. SANs use much higher bandwidth connections, most commonly fibre channel, which also provide redundant data paths. SANs automatically "clean up" the data and improve routing of access to the data while the systems are in use. And because of their tight integration, SANs reduce the amount of the work that servers need to do to manage the storage, sometimes by as much as 50%. DG has been an active participant in SAN architectures, and DELL's work with DG has given DELL access to much of this technology, as well as a good core hardware set. DELL has gone further by partnering with a number of software vendors to build pieces of the "stack". So although the NETS design provides a low-end attached storage product, it is not the kind of solution which will sell to high end customers. It is more designed for smaller applications where performance is not much of an issue and a simple, lower-cost design wins over a more capable but higher cost solution.