Texas Memory Systems can add a RAM disk to your SAN, StoreAge takes the middleware outside the data path, storage remains a popular VC investment, and much more news.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 21, 2001]

Last week at Internet World Fall, a small group gathered to create Storage Next, which was collocated with Internet World Fall. Manufacturers took the opportunity to release a few new products, and New York City's economy obtained a fillip from the trade show activity.

The most innovative product elicited a "why haven't we seen this before" from us. Texas Memory Systems, Inc. has a RAM-based SAN device. Paul Kaler, Vice President, said that the key value of RAM storage is latency. "We're talking about microseconds of latency, not milliseconds," he told us. He envisions the product being used to hold data in any case where so much data is being written that some is not getting written immediately. In that case, sending a temporary copy to the Ram-San would provide assurance that the data would not be lost if the write process died.

The RamSan-210 supports 700 MB/sec, four Fibre Channel ports, 8 to 32 GB of storage, and over 200,000 IOPS. The even faster RamSan-520 supports 3,000 MB/sec, 15 Fibre Channel ports, 8 to 64 GB of storage, and over 750,000 IOPS. Prices of various configurations are displayed on the website.

StoreAge networking technologies touted their Storage Virtualization Manger. Said Don Fautt, Director of Virtualization Architects, "many other vendors claim that their product provides out-of-path management. Ours is truly outside the data path."

Going into detail, he explained, "Any 'in the datapath' design will throttle the performance of the SAN, since the data will pass through the device. Since many devices have a 500MB/sec PCI bus inside, it's reasonable to assume that that latency coupled with the limited bandwidth of the device inside will degrade performance."

SVM network diagram

StoreAge also has a one-hour online course (signup here) which we have not taken, but since it's free, if you've got the time and the bandwidth, you may want to check it out.

Pricing of the StoreAge Storage Virtualization Manager varies widely depending on configuration, and volume discounts are available for some components. StoreAge provides software keys to unlock storage and this is an important part of any easy upgrade strategy. A bundle including two SVMs (for fault tolerance), MultiView snapshot software, support for 10 servers, and 10 TB of storage would cost $68,500.

JMR was touting the E-Z SAN. JMR builds the enclosure and then solicits best-of-breed component providers. The product utilizes the JNI FibreStar line of Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), Hitachi hard drives (3.5 inch, 10,025 RPM, 79.9GB), the Vixel 7200 Fabric Switch, Chaparral's JFS2224 Fibre Channel-to-Ultra 160 external RAID controller, and Silicon Image's 7400 series of Fibre Channel-to-Fibre Channel RAID controllers.

Sony showcased extraordinarily powerful tape libraries. Sony has a history of superior tape technology dating back to the founding of the company. Remembering that the pundits had preferred Betamax to VHS VCR tapes, and that many prefer Sony 8mm camcorders to VHS-tape-based camcorders, we were interested. We had not heard of Sony data storage, but Sony's DTF storage website is at www.sony.com/datasystems. Data Systems sales manager Brett Silverman told us that Sony's tape technology, which uses cassettes, has an embedded chip to track the content of each tape, as well as a bar code, enabling the system to get data up and off the tape faster than traditional spooled solutions.

At 200 GB per cassette native (with much more storage possible after compression of the data), an automatic tape loader can store Petabytes of data (that's thousands of TB, millions of GB, billions of MB, trillions of bytes). A 400 square foot (floor space) configuration of the top-of-the-line DMS-8400 could store 499.8 TB native, 1.29 PB compressed. The compression is DTF-2, and Sony is looking forward to being able to store much more on each tape as the technology advances to DTF-3 and DTF-4. Tom Yuhas, general manager of the Data Systems Division, says, "the DMS-8400 is like our lego set," meaning that it is modular and expandible to even ten times more storage than the configuration cited above.

At the other end of the scale, the DMS-B150L with two tape drives, twenty tapes included, capable of storing up to 30 TB in 200 GB tapes, would list at $155,000 for SCSI, $165,000 for the Fibre Channel version. Tapes list at $199.

Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC) added fully integrated data path conditioning, SAN security, data movement, and multiple fabric support to its Scalar 100 and Scalar 1000 tape libraries. The Scalar 100 supports from 1 to 8 tape drives and from 15 to 96 data cartridges, depending on the configuration and technology selected, which translates into up to 14.4 terabytes of data in 14U. The Scalar 1000 includes what the company calls "barrier-free expansion" and supports from 1 to 48 drives, and from 118 to 1182 tapes (over 175 TB). Scalar 100 and Scalar 1000 storage networking libraries are available now through ADIC channel partners with pricing starting at $28,700.

SpectraLogic released new AIT-3 versions of its 6400 and 12000 tape drives. Owners of AIT-2 versions can trade in their drives for credits of $2,250 to $3,000 per drive, depending on the number of drives traded in. AIT-3 roughly doubles the capacity of the units over AIT-2. The SpectraLogic 6400AIT-3 holds 166 TB in 40 U of rack space and is priced from $50,000 to $110,000 depending on configuration, while the denser SpectraLogic 12000 AIT-3 holds 31.2 TB in 14 U of rack space and is priced from $88,000 to $450,000 depending on configuration.

Compaq touted its StorageWorks RA 4100 SAN product as a multivendor, interoperable solution capable of supporting Windows NT 4.0, Novell Netware 4.2 and 5.0, and UnixWare 2.1 and 7.x. Compaq's extensive product line can be viewed at www.compaq.com/storage.

Xand corporation is evaluating a new Cisco storage router, the SN 5420 Storage Router, at the company data center. The product is designed to receive SCSI data that is transported over TCP / IP and forward it to any Fibre Channel storage device on the network. Joe Fuccillo, Senior Vice-President of Xand, had this to say about the process of developing iSCSI standards, "The maturation of the product in terms of driver support is just not there yet. Once the IETF standard is complete and iSCSI host bus adapters ship, we will really begin see this technology take off. However, the standardization is not expected until this June. For now, there is a complicated process of mapping operating systems to the drivers, which makes configuration extremely difficult for the average user or support group."

ExaDrive's rackmount Diamond RAID

We also met Jeff Butkovsky, VP of Managed Storage Services at Access IT. The company provides storage services and backup and recovery plans for large enterprises. He told us that the storage services industry is optimistic about the future because new privacy laws covering medical data come into effect by 2003. "It's like Y2K for the medical industry," he said. SSPs that can provide high levels of security will benefit. "Hospitals spent a great deal of money on imaging machines such as CAT scans, but have not yet upgraded their back end infrastructure, which can be up to thirty years old. These places will need to outsource."

Systems Maintenance Services, Inc. (SMS) told us that it can provide maintenance and extended warranty support for IBM, SUN, Compaq, and Digital hardware that's cheaper than the service provided by the manufacturer. The company runs data centers, and can provide premium services too, such as data recovery, from SMS data centers across the nation (see map). Tom Jones, Senior District Sales Manager, told us, "I cannot give a specific discount figure but 30 to 50 percent off OEM list is not unheard of. Since it is our primary mission to improve the quality of maintenance the end user is experiencing, pricing is just one of the reasons why companies choose Systems Maintenance Services."

In the "gosh this must be useful somewhere" department, we came across SysMaster, founded in 1999, which showcased its "everything-in-one-box" products for enterprises of all sizes. The products incorporate bandwidth management, DoS prevention, a load balancer, a firewall, and a router.

Finally, in a twist of fancy, we met a business species we did not know existed. Fortress Development Company designs and builds high security data centers. Their intriguing website is www.cyfort.com.

Deals
ITIS Solutions, a Storage Services Provider (SSP) was acquired by rival SAN Holdings (OTC:SANZ), of Castle Rock, Colo., for an undisclosed sum. We expect more SSP consolidation in the new year.

In other deals, Storigen Systems, a provider of distributed storage systems, found $15 million in second round financing. Nishan Systems, a provider of IP storage solutions and a key player in the Promontory Project (featured in this column in September), obtained a $10 million line of credit.

In the related realm of intelligent networking, intelligent routing firm RouteScience obtained $30.5 million in second round funding.

—End