Convergence Of Storage And Networking Opens Doors For IP Storage

Recently, Adaptec (Milpitas, CA) wanted to find out what storage issues were on the minds of its customers. To accomplish this, the company hired a third-party firm to talk to IT managers at end users' companies. "We wanted to find out what their storage needs are today, and what they are looking for to meet their storage needs going forward," says Ram Jayam, director of marketing for the storage solutions group at Adaptec. Most respondents indicated that fabric-based storage is essential to allow companies to reduce downtime and have efficient backup and disaster recovery systems in place for mission-critical applications. When asked what fabric-attached storage solutions are currently available, most IT administrators could only cite Fibre Channel.

"If you talk to 10 IT managers, 3 of them have already bought into Fibre Channel because they had problems that had to be addressed, and Fibre Channel was an appropriate solution," says Jayam. "But the majority of IT managers have looked at Fibre Channel and passed on it because of the challenges involved." Some of the challenges Jayam cited are the difficulties with managing two different protocols and two different networks, the need for special training, the equipment cost, and the cost of managing the storage resources going forward. There is also a distance limitation that end users face with Fibre Channel.

Ethernet Rates Better Than Fibre Channel
"Many customers that looked at Fibre Channel decided to wait and see if something better came along," says Jayam. "When the interviewer mentioned a fabric-attached storage solution based on Ethernet rather than Fibre Channel, it was very well received. End users are looking for a protocol that could run on technologies they are already familiar with and still give them availability, reliability, and scalability." iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface, a new Internet protocol [IP]-based storage networking standard for data storage) came out as the clear winner in this category.

Barry Haaser, VP of marketing at Alacritech (San Jose, CA), has also seen increased interest in the convergence of storage and networking, and he agrees that iSCSI will be at the forefront of the SAN (storage area network) market. "iSCSI allows VARs to take advantage of their existing IP fabric to build a cost-effective storage solution using Ethernet and IP products," he says. "The industry got off to a rocky start. Although the first products were good, they were analogous to one hand clapping because there just wasn't anything to connect them to." Haaser believes that situation is changing. With storage and networking converging, the benefits of IP can now be achieved within a storage environment.

Ethernet Connects Servers To Storage
iSCSI commands are initiated on devices that get embedded in a server or NAS (network attached storage) appliance. There is now a variety of products on the market that enable a server or NAS device to connect to a storage fabric using IP. On the target end, there is typically RAID (redundant array of independent disks), a tape library, or some other type of storage device. "Many new products will be available in the third or fourth quarter of this year that will enable customers to take native iSCSI target devices and start building true IP storage solutions," said Haaser. "Building those solutions will be a huge channel opportunity. VARs will no longer be bound to proprietary Fibre Channel architectures. Interoperability issues will go away, allowing VARs to bring the economies of IP into storage."

Haaser believes, initially, IP storage solutions will be department-level and small to medium business solutions, since iSCSI is making storage more affordable to businesses. But that is just the first stage. "There are already trials going on in which companies are dropping IP products into traditional Fibre Channel strongholds," he says. IP storage is not replacing Fibre Channel, but it is certainly gaining ground. Companies are building on their infrastructures and providing more economical and scalable solutions to help deal with data. While IP storage is not dealing with mission-critical data, it is dealing with things like backup, e-mail, and databases that do not need to be in a Fibre Channel SAN.

Management Costs Fuel Adoption
Randy Fardal, VP of marketing at Nishan Systems (San Jose, CA), has already seen IP storage make an impact in many businesses. "We continue to see evidence that it is being adopted," he says. "We are seeing adoption from both channel partners [OEMs and systems integrators] as well as end users." Most end users' interest has come from large financial institutions, hospitals, manufacturing, and petroleum companies. Fardal also believes customers are starting to rely on IP storage for business-critical applications. "We started shipping IP storage products last year," he says. "We are finding that IP storage is applicable in the data center itself and not just for connecting data centers."

Fardal believes cost is still the main driving force behind iSCSI, but the initial expenditure is just the tip of the iceberg. "There are capital expense costs, but the lower operating expenses [management costs] far outweigh anything you would spend on capital equipment," he says. One Nishan customer built the core of its SAN with standard, off-the-shelf Gigabit Ethernet products. The periphery of the SAN, which includes all of the edge switches, is also Ethernet. The customer created a large SAN with hundreds of ports. Although all of the end systems are Fibre Channel, the core of the entire network is IP.

"I have seen and heard many storage writers saying the driving force behind IP storage is the equipment cost savings," he says. "While I feel there may be some truth to that, I believe they are overlooking the hidden, or operational, costs. When you buy a conventional Fibre Channel switch network, you also have to hire and train a Fibre Channel switch staff." Because of the significant cost savings on the management side, customers have told Fardal they could have saved money by going with IP storage products even if the Fibre Channel switches were free.

By forgoing a Fibre Channel network, a company's networking staff can now manage the SAN. "This is cost-effective," says Fardal. "A large financial institution might already have 300 or 400 switch and router experts on staff. They have diagnostic equipment and all of the network management products to manage their IP network. By purchasing an IP network for their storage, they are able to use the same management, personnel, and diagnostic tools they already have." Fardal adds that if that same institution installed a Fibre Channel switch network and had to hire just five new administrators to manage it, that could add almost $1 million per year in hidden costs. "By using the people they already have, most companies will save enough to pay for that IP storage network in a matter of months," he adds.