Emulex Corp. announced that the intelligent chip it acquired with
Aarohi Inc. will be incorporated into a new split-path storage
virtualization platform and combined in the channel with software
from LSI Logic Corp. subsidiary StoreAge Networking Technologies.
The Model 765 Intelligent Services Platform, which will be
available to the channel in April, is a 1U appliance based on the
Aarohi intelligent chip to provide hardware acceleration for
network-based virtualization software. Model 765 comes with four
Fibre Channel ports and is being marketed to OEMs as a platform for
virtualization software. With StoreAge, Emulex has struck up a
meet-in-the-channel deal that will see the StoreAge SVM (storage
virtualization manager) software packaged with the Model 765 by
VARs and integrators to make the Intelligent Services Platform
Model 765S.
Emulex claims the storage virtualization appliance is capable of
supporting up to 1.2 million IOPS and 1,400 megabytes per second
(MBps) of aggregate throughput. The device also supports N_Port
connectivity on the platform, which means it can interoperate with
any SAN fabric from any switch vendor. The appliance also does not
need to be connected to a director or core switch to manage the
environment. Instead, a user would plug in two devices to any
switch on the SAN: the Model 765 for data path operations and the
SVM module on its own server for control-path operations.
"The real claim to fame here is the cost: It's amazingly
affordable," said Brian Garrett, technical director of the
Enterprise Strategy Group Lab. The Model 765 appliance, according
to Taufik Ma, former vice president of marketing and business
development for Aarohi and currently vice president of marketing in
the intelligent network products division for Emulex, has a
suggested retail price of $10,000 per unit, roughly half the cost
of hardware for other virtualization products. The cost of software
still has to be factored in on top of it, and multiple appliances
must be purchased to support multiple data centers.
Ma also emphasized that Model 765 is being shopped to other OEMs
and is not exclusively meant to run with StoreAge, which could have
wider pricing implications for the market if other OEMs port their
virtualization software to it, according to Arun Taneja, founder
and analyst with the Taneja Group.
"Many companies, like EMC, originally made split-path
virtualization products available only in conjunction with switches
from certain vendors," Arun Taneja said. "But I wouldn't be
surprised to see a change of direction there, since purpose-built
appliances like this one can work with any SAN fabric."
However, according to Rick Villars, vice president of storage
system research for IDC, wading in among big storage companies
within a market space they are all looking to dominate might be a
tricky path for Emulex. "The question is whether storage
manufacturers will want this. Emulex has a balancing act here to
offer open, flexible options for people, but to recognize that its
primary business partners are considering this one of the main
battlegrounds in storage."