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

To: GuinnessGuy who wrote (1283)	5/30/1999 1:04:00 PM
From: George Dawson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

Craig, Thanks for the link - will view the presentation later. Just wanted to comment now that FC does support IP. The diagram of the the protocols supported are given in the document on the Ancor web site: fibrechannel.com It is the diagram at the top. It also specifies the channel rather than network protocols. Ancor has given a number of demonstrations in the past where they have run channel and network protocols through the same switch. I think that was specified in the demo diagrams which I can't find yet on their new site, but here is a release that refers directly to using FC as an IP network: ancor.com More recently, I think FC companies are emphasizing how SAN will reduce the burden on LAN traffic and their releases say that Ancor switches "...provide gigabit-speed access to stored data throughout the enterprise without affecting LAN IP traffic.". George

To: GuinnessGuy who wrote (1283)	6/1/1999 10:33:00 AM
From: David A. Lethe	Respond to of 4808

Found some mistakes & glaring omissions from the netapp presentation. Since Netapp doesn't have a true SAN software/hardware product, I will leave the reason why they don't put SANs in a better light up to you ;) 1. A SAN does NOT require FC. There are several products shipping today that support traditional (parallel) SCSI, as well as SSA. All three of these technologies have features and benefits, and are a correct solution under the right circumstances. Don't be mislead into thinking that FC is the ONLY way of doing things, and the best all-around solution. 2. A SAN does not have to use encapsulated SCSI. Some SAN software uses native SCSI w/o the encapsulation. 3. (Slide 11). The SAN products that exist and are shipping are more like: Application Server (1-n) -> RAID (where the filesystems are on the RAID). The SAN software exists on the servers, and controls the systems and permissions for mounting the filesystems. The application servers attach to the common RAID system by the rules that the SAN fabric allow. I.e, FC would typically all go into shared hub or switch. In the case of SCSI, 2-4 systems would directly attach, in case of SSA, 2-8 systems would directly attach. 4. Slide 14 is blatantly incorrect. Mercury's SAN software (and some others) allows SGI, NT, MAC, SUN to CONCURRENTLY share raw disks or filesystems. I've seen performance 10x what netapps can do. There were some smaller things that put a bad spin on SAN's, but point 4 above was enough for me. David A. Lethe