Surprises in store at Storage Expo
Interoperability and standards are likely to be key areas at this year's Storage Expo. Paul Bray reports on the technologies to watch out for.
The twin imperatives of gaining space and improving value for money are driving users to consolidate, amalgamate and integrate as much of their storage resources as possible.
This is placing heavy reliance on interoperability and standards, making them the key issues in storage today.
This year's most significant development is Bluefin, an open interface standard for storage area networks (Sans). Bluefin uses XML and Common Information Model (CIM) over TCP/IP to manage multi-vendor devices on a San, and to enable Sans from multiple vendors to interoperate.
"The industry is moving towards open standards, and Bluefin/CIM is the most likely to succeed," claimed Scott Brooks, EMEA sales director at fibre channel and storage management vendor LSI Logic.
"While there has been a lot of hype about what it will achieve, most vendors understand the seriousness of the interoperability problem and want this to succeed. CIM-aware storage products are already planned for roll-out this year, which is a very encouraging sign."
San interoperability has improved significantly in the past year, according to Ian Lockhart, strategic projects manager at storage distributor Ideal.
"Although standards are the way to go, the industry cannot stand still until they are fully defined," he said. "So we have also seen competing manufacturers exchanging APIs to ensure interoperability. This is fast becoming a requirement for users."
In September Storage Expo exhibitors Hitachi Data Systems, Inrange, Legato, StorageTek and Veritas, along with IBM, announced an interoperability initiative to connect remote Sans and enable data mirroring between sites.
San and network attached storage (Nas) products will be much in evidence at Storage Expo. Auspex will unveil its NSc3000 network storage controller, which allows companies with multi-vendor Sans to access and share files using Nas protocols.
Veritas will be demonstrating the new version of its SANPoint Control, which unifies the management of Sans, direct attached storage (Das) and applications such as Oracle and MS Exchange.
QLogic and McData will both be launching lower-cost San solutions aimed at small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
New standards are also emerging at the interface level. ISCSI, for example, is expected to take off this year. Designed specifically for linking disparate storage facilities via IP-based networks, iSCSI should improve the speed and simplicity of data transmission.
It will also allow data to be stored and retrieved across a variety of public and private networks.
Another standard to watch is InfiniBand, a bus architecture designed to control data flow between processors and I/O devices. It offers almost limitless scalability and up to 2.5Gbps bandwidth.
Fibre Channel architecture is also taking off. "By the middle of 2003 we should see the ratification of a 10Gbps Fibre Channel standard," claimed Paul Talbut, a director of the Fibre Channel Industry Association. "This will accelerate the deployment of Fibre Channel Sans."
Zarah Damji, European storage analyst at research firm IDC, said: "We see iSCSI playing a role in SMEs that prefer to stick to known brands," she explained.
"This will push Fibre Channel into the higher end, where performance is critical. InfiniBand will probably remain a server-to-server interconnect, or will be used in clustering environments and Das."
Managing to succeed
Storage management, a core technology for reducing costs and boosting efficiency, will be well represented at Storage Expo.
Overland Storage will demonstrate its new storage resource management software, which enables companies to manage heterogeneous Das and Nas environments.
EMC will be rebundling its Patrol storage management products to make it easier for customers to change the vendor mix of their hardware. And Legato will be demonstrating its automated resource management technology.
This works across several layers of a system, including networks, data, applications and servers. It allows systems and applications to manage their own resources, provisioning and policy-based decision making, making resource management and recovery faster, cheaper, less labour-intensive and less prone to human error.
And just to prove that storage is still getting faster, cheaper and smaller - just like the rest of IT - there will be a range of product announcements, including:
- Plasmon launching DVD libraries with capacities up to 20TB, claimed to be among the largest in the world.
- Tandberg launching tape autoloaders with capacities up to 3.5TB, packing up to 320GB onto each Super Digital Linear Tape cartridge.
- BlueArc announcing faster, higher-capacity Nas servers with new data management and system management capabilities.
CONTACTS
BlueArc (01344) 408 200
www.bluearc.com
EMC (0870) 608 7777
www.emc.com
Legato (01628) 511 811
www.legato.com
Overland (0118) 989 8022
www.overlandstorage.com
Plasmon (01763) 262 963
www.plasmon.co.uk
Tandberg (0800) 169 1661
www.tandberg.com
Veritas (0870) 243 1080
www.veritas.com/uk