Although the university doesn't have a switched SAN fabric, and thus by definition doesn't have a SAN, the Fibre interface between one server and storage device serves to prepare them for a phased approach to a SAN.

The university's immediate problem is backup for its other systems. "Our backup processes now are standard network-based," says Pete Bartz, manager of enterprise computing services. "We know, based on our growth, that we will need something that's not network-based, or else when we get big enough we'll have a management nightmare. We're using today's technology to position ourselves for a SAN implementation and learning along the way." In six to eight months the university expects to implement a storage area network, even if it's limited to backup.

Looking beyond the backup problem, the ability to consolidate and manage storage logically is attractive to Bartz. "Our environment requires fairly quick growth in any one of several pockets of storage--production, testing, development, or data warehouse, for example. We may have some to spare storage in one area. We may be short in another. If we can go to a common network fabric to manage our storage, then all the resources become a pool that's assignable to individual systems without having to make a lot of physical changes. It makes it a lot easier to move resources around," he says.

At Acxiom, Cherry says he is working only with Compaq storage on Compaq servers, but would like to have the flexibility that open systems afford. "It's going to be pressure from customers like us who say, 'Unless you can show me demonstrated interoperability in your labs with, for example, [Compaq] StorageWorks and EMC [Symmetrix] interoperating and managed from a single point, then you don't meet my criteria for a qualified vendor,'" Cherry says.

As the market matures, he predicts, all vendors will gradually remove barriers to interoperability. Those who worry about losing control of an early market share will discover they have more to lose by being perceived as closed, especially if new products prove equally reliable. "We already see storage vendors such as Compaq and EMC in discussions with other vendors, and they have begun incorporating some other vendors' products, like Brocade Communications Systems switches in their solutions," Cherry says.

In the view of University of Minnesota's Bartz, open systems are ultimately the better choice because they will last longer, receive better support, and work in a distributed environment. "My problem is I have a lot of data, it's growing by leaps and bounds, and my window for backup keeps shrinking," Bartz says. "I can't afford a solution that's not for the long term. It can't be a proprietary solution that, when open standards appear, may become obsolete. I'll try to implement the broadest platform with the broadest infrastructure underneath it that I can. But your infrastructure is secondary to the problem you have, and I can't be pigeonholed."

The sniping among vendors represents their anxieties that rivals will use the uncertainty surrounding a new technology to lock customers into a particular platform or product. In the short term, vendors will offer a complete solution as one way to bypass the interoperability problem and gain customer confidence. However, Scott MacIntyre, business line manager for storage networking at software developer Legato Systems Inc., says this isn't a viable option for anyone in the long term. "We all have a common vision of open, interoperating storage networks that include all vendors, big and small," he says. "We all understand that's where we have to get to. Criticism gets thrown at EMC now, but it gets thrown at the others as well."

Eric Herzog, VP of marketing at redundant arrays of independent disks controller vendor Mylex Corp., compares Fibre Channel storage area networks to the early development stages of SCSI, when there were also interoperability problems. He says he expects the problems to be solved more rapidly this time, however. "The guys doing Fibre Channel are the guys who did SCSI," Herzog says. "They learned their lesson once. Last year, I would have told you nothing works with anything. But interoperability is progressing well."

While they may never be totally heterogeneous, the benefits of networked storage make SANs the storage technology of the future. In a rapidly changing business world in which it has become impossible to purchase storage in quantities that will cover all contingencies, centralized, consolidated storage that can be shared, scaled, and redeployed according to need offers IT organizations a flexible solution. In addition, it reduces the operational impact that Unix and Windows NT servers are placing on IT. With skilled workers already scarce and hard to retain, networked storage promises to lower a company's management costs.

For the time being, vendors are working together through industry consortia to make interoperability a reality. In the meantime, customers don't need to sit on their hands. There's no reason for even the most cautious companies not to begin laying the groundwork for storage area networks now, by introducing Fibre Channel into their environments, for instance, and learning what they can about the technology by tracking vendors' involvement with standards bodies and asking questions.

return to page 1, 2

Photo of Bartz by Doug Knutson