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how to find SAN content more easily
Editor:-
I first published a directory of Fibre-channel adapters way back in 1994
- as one of the many buyers guides within the
SPARC Product
Directory.
When I moved all the storage stuff here to
StorageSearch.com in 1998 - SANs were one of the most popular subjects - and I
expanded our coverage to include many other topics which mushroomed around the
SAN space such as routers, switches, GBICs,
SSDs, training, security
etc
Today in 2011 - with hundreds of companies in the SAN market the
old long lists which used to be on this page are no longer useful for helping
you find SAN content.
Instead I suggest you can use site search below
to find SAN related vendors, guides and articles - or click
on this link to get a prepulated search for SAN which you can extend by
adding your own terms. |
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In recent years I've been using "FC" as
an abbreviation for "fibre-channel" - particularly when it comes to
adapters and drives. So using FC in your searches will also get you useful
results:- as for example in this link
FC
SSDs (search).
Because I've written about the SAN market since the
technology started I've been consistent about the way I used terms in news
stories and vendor profiles.
Therefore
NAS and
iSCSI - which started as
much later ethernet related terms are not going to get scrambled with your SAN
search results - unless there's a good reason.
The exception is "IP
SAN" - which is a term I resisted using for many years - but has become
widely adopted by vendors as a (they think it's cool but I think it's
misleading) alternative to the perfectly good legacy terms which existed before.
In
the early 2000s I started a list of SAN software vendors. That became irrelevant
as a directory after a few years when it became clear that most serious
enterprise software vendors had to support storage networks of all types
otherwise they weren't doing anything useful in the market.
Although
all the content here on the mouse site is transitioning to
solid state
storage - you'll still find hundreds of articles and thousands of news
stories about traditional FC storage products on this site by using the
searches above. | | |
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classic SAN articles from
storage history
SAN Applications
SAN History's 1st Decade
A Storage
Architecture Guide
Tuning SANs with Solid
State Disks |
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| SAN news |
highest density FC SAN SLC
SSD racks with no SPOF
Editor:- December 6, 2011 - Texas Memory Systems today
announced
imminent availability of the
RamSan-720
- a 4 port (FC/IB) 1U
rackmount SSD
which provides 10TB of usable 2D (FPGA implemented)
RAID protected and hot
swappable - SLC
capacity with 100/25 microseconds R/W latency (with all protections in
place) delivering 400K IOPS (4KB), 5GB/s throughput - with no single point of
failure (at $20K/TB approx list).
The new SSD uses a
regular RAM cache
flash architecture which in the event of
sudden power
loss has an ultra reliable battery array which holds up the SSD power for 30
seconds while automatically backing
up all data in flight and translation tables to nonvolatile flash storage. On
power up - the SSD is ready for full speed operation in less than a minute.
Aimed
at HA tier 1 storage markets - the RamSan-720 consumes only 300-400 W - which
makes it practical for high end users to install nearly 1/2
petabyte of SSD
storage in a single cabinet - without having to worry about the secondary
reliability and
data integrity
risks which can arise from high temperature build-ups in such enclosures.
The high density and low power consumption of this SSD made it
feasible to stuff over 400TB of usable SSD capacity into a single cabinet
without fear of over
heating.
finally SAN-bound - Fusion-io inside Kaminario's K2
Editor:-
September 13, 2011 - Kaminario
announced
it has integrated Fusion-io's
PCIe SSDs as a new
option in its
K2
FC SAN compatible SSD
product line (which was until now
RAM SSD only) to
provide flash and
hybrid storage
options.
Using the new options the K2 can provide from 3 to 30TB of
non-stop, protected and self healing, blade server based flash storage in 4U
to 12U of rack space with R/W latency of 260 / 150 microseconds at a list price
of $30K / TB. ...click to
read comments and analysis
SANRAD launches front loadable PCIe SSD accelerators
Editor:-
August 31, 2011 - SANRAD
today introduced front loadable PCIe flash SSD accelerators as options in
its
V-Switch storage appliances
enabling upto 4TB of flash, together with
2x10GE networking and
2x8Gb FC, all in a single
1U rackmount appliance (or 10TB in 2U).
The unique front-panel installation allows for quick, easy maintenance
and upgradeability in the data center. It enables a "pay as you grow"
approach, allowing customers to add or replace PCIe flash modules without
opening the appliance, similar to the way
HDDs are added to a
server.
SAN Shared File Systems with SSDs
Editor:- July 11,
2011 -
SAN
Shared File Systems with SSDs is the subject of a new blog from Texas Memory Systems.
Author
Jamon Bowen
says in the article - "There is a new option that I have seen
getting deployed more and more often: using high capacity SSDs and a
SAN shared file system. A
SAN shared filesystem provides the locking to allow multiple servers to directly
access the block storage concurrently."
Editor's comments:-
The "new option" above is narrative license - because I know that
TMS has been doing this for years - but this type of configuration is more
common now - because of
declining SSD costs.
I like this article for its conceptual purity (sticks to the theme and
doesn't waffle on about SANs or SSDs) - and it has a nice picture too. ...read
the article
Oracle acquires Pillar
Editor:- June 29, 2011 -
Oracle today
announced it has
entered into an agreement to acquire Pillar Data Systems -
which was already majority owned by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
Editor's
comments:- I guess I'd say - So what? This simply ends a fiction which no
one seriously believed in. Pillar was hampered by its ownership which meant
that it could be yanked in any direction at a moment's notice. Pulling the
storage skunkworks inside the Oracle corporate fold will work better for
customers and as a business - even if it may upset some internal stakeholders.
EMC will enter PCIe SSD market
Editor:- May 9, 2011
- EMC today
announced
new strategies related to the
SSD market.
Among
other things EMC said it has created a flash business unit and will enter the
PCIe SSD market later
this year. The company indicated that its run rate of shipping flash storage
array capacity in 2011 is approximately 3x the level it had achieved in
2010.
Dataram doubles memory in XcelaSAN
Editor:- April 6,
2011 - Dataram
has doubled the RAM cache available in its
XcelaSAN
(2U rackmount fibre-channel SAN
SSD accelerator) to
256GB (the system price is approx $75,000).
XcelaSAN delivers up to
30x transparent R/W acceleration to attached
disk storage arrays with a
high-availability architecture (internal performance is
upto
450,000 IOPS). Unlike vanilla SSD accelerators, XcelaSAN dynamically
caches high I/O activity application data when it is needed, to support multiple
applications many times larger than the cache itself.
"With the
new capacity upgrade, the XcelaSAN storage optimization appliance allows
customers to dramatically accelerate more applications with a cost-effective,
easy to install storage appliance," said
Jason
Caulkins, Chief Technologist, Dataram. "The added cache capacity
allows customers to add cache tiering to a wider range of applications in
addition to their mission critical applications, resulting in improved
performance across their entire business."
Editor's comments:- when Dataram launched the XcelaSAN in
September 2009 -
they published precious little performance data and they didn't offer a simple
high availability option. Now with benefit of customer experience and a
reworking of the design Dataram has a lot more info which describes the product
including a useful (and overdue)
FAQs
page. Another factor which has changed in the meantime is that more than 20
other manufacturers now offer
ASAPs (Auto-tuning
SSD Accelerated Pools of storage) with their own flavors of interface, form
factor etc making this a confusing market for potential buyers.
The
simple pitch for the Dataram ASAP is:- it works with your existing FC SAN
storage arrays and installs in about an hour. Because it does the hot spot
tuning automatically it suits medium sized enterprises who may only need to buy
a single system. These users are not so attractive to high end SSD oems who
for business reasons prefer focusing their technical and sales talent on
customers with high multiple repeat business potential.
One amusing
thing for me in seeing today's news about doubling the memory in the XcelaSAN is
that Dataram has for decades been the first memory maker to offer
increased
memory capacity for leading servers. Now the company is doing the same thing
to itself.
NetApp acquires Engenio
Editor:- March 9, 2011 -
Network Appliance
announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the Engenio external
storage systems business of LSI for $480 million.
The close is anticipated to occur in approximately 60 days subject to
customary closing conditions.
Engenio will enable NetApp to address
emerging and fast-growing market segments such as
video, including
full-motion video capture and digital video surveillance, as well as high
performance computing applications, such as genomics sequencing and scientific
research. NetApp has the channel reach and customer relationships today that
require high performance and big bandwidth capabilities that will be well served
by Engenio's storage platform. NetApp says these segments are expected to
collectively represent a $5
billion incremental market opportunity by 2014.
Editor's
comments:- LSI has been trying to sell off Engenio since 2004. NetApp will
love them more. For a brief time this past week - searches for Engenio exceeded
that for "SSD". In the previous decade over
500 leading storage
companies were acquired, changed name or went bust.
Xiotech enters FC ASAP market
Editor:- January 31,
2011 - Xiotech
is the latest company to join the crowding
SSD ASAP market with
the
launch
of its Hybrid ISE - a
3U FC rack with
14TB of capacity and 60,000
IOPS
performance which internally uses a mixture of
2.5" SSDs and
HDDs.
Similarly
to many other ASAP vendors - Xiotech claims its systems has "fully
automated set-and-forget simplicity". The company says that using ROI
calculations from weighted I/O counts, automated tiering begins within 1 minute
of I/O and continues to manage the performance requirements of applications in
real-time.
Editor's comments:- in its
Jan 2011 blog - Xiotech
disclosed that a customer survey it had done about SSD usage revealed "only
9% in-use or currently evaluating the use of SSD. Another 8% responded
that SSDs were in 2011 plans. Of those who've adopted/currently testing SSDs,
over half were using SSDs as part of a storage array. Less that 25% were
deploying memory cards added to servers."
Those figures indicate the
huge upside
which still remains for the SSD market.
Inside Texas Memory Systems' 8GB/s FC SSD
Editor:-
January 26, 2011 -Texas
Memory Systems today announced the availability of 8Gbps fibre-channel
interfaces for its
RamSan-630 - fast 10TB
3U rackmount SLC
SSDs.
Each unit can be configured with upto 10 independent 8Gb FC
ports for a total data transfer rate of 8 GBytes / sec. Ports can be mixed -
with the previously available (and 25% faster)
InfiniBand.
Editor's
comments:- I interviewed Jamon Bowen,
Director of Sales Engineering for TMS - and learned a lot about the internal
design and architecture of this SSD which the company hasn't revealed
before. Click here
to read - key performance enablers inside the RamSan-630.
the future of enterprise data storage
Editor:-
January 23, 2011 -
the
future of data storage is the lofty sounding but aptly chosen title of a
new article published online today in Broadcast Engineering -
written by Zsolt
Kerekes editor of StorageSearch.com
(that's me).
It's a completely new article which synthesizes and
integrates concepts from several futuristic articles which have already
appeared here on the mouse site and wraps them into a cohesive whole. Anyone
who reads it will get a clear idea of where the incremental changes they read
about in storage news pages (like this one) are likely to end up. ...read
the article
A new way of looking at the Enterprise SSD market
Editor:-
October 4, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
recently published a new article -
Legacy versus New
Dynasty - A new way of looking at the Enterprise SSD market
It
proposes a new classification method for "enterprise SSDs" which
will help you get through the jungle of new SSD web content - and see all
new products in a new light. |
| Storage History................................................................. | |
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