Emulex announced it has released a new embedded
switch that is built on the new
Fibre Channel to
SATA (FC-SATA) protocol ratified last
Wednesday by the ANSI T11 standards committee. The new
specification provides for a direct connection between Fibre
Channel and SATA disks and is the result of an effort
spearheaded by Emulex last June.
Following the ratification of the standard, Emulex announced a
new embedded switch, the InSpeed SOC 432, which will allow for SATA
disks to be directly connected within pre-existing Fibre Channel
enclosures. The specification does not provide for direct
communication between discrete devices, and according to Emulex's
vice president of marketing, Mike Smith, there are no plans to
extend it to that level.
"The real value proposition here is that it will enable users to
leverage existing Fibre Channel infrastructure with lower cost
disk," Smith said.
Both Emulex and Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) officials
were tight-lipped when it came to which of Emulex's OEMs or
competitors, if any, will come out with a product based on the new
specification and when. Neither Smith nor the FCIA spokesperson and
Engenio Storage Group alliance manager, Thomas Hammond-Doel, would
say whether or not products based on the new standard from other
vendors will hit the market.
Analysts have expressed skepticism that this specification would
see broad acceptance in the industry. With most industry standards,
according to Arun Taneja, founder and analyst with the Taneja
Group, five or more big players in the market tend to lead to
better adoption. Taneja pointed out that Emulex has only one real
competitor in QLogic Corp.
"The problem is there are only two
players in that market," he told
SearchStorage.com in September. "And they hate each other. Why
should QLogic ever do something that makes Emulex look
good?"
QLogic officials did not return requests for comment on this
story as of press time.
According to Greg Schulz, founder and analyst with the StorageIO
Group, the new standard will require broader support in the
industry. "It'll be interesting to see who they land [as
partners]," Schulz said. "This is nothing; a normal person is just
going to deploy off the shelf -- it requires OEM wins."
Meanwhile, some other experts remain optimistic that the FC-SATA
technology will ultimately find its way to end users. "I expect
that we'll see storage systems with Emulex Fibre Channel-SATA
silicon inside in the next couple quarters," said Brian Garrett,
technical director of the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Lab.
"We've already seen large-scale adoption of storage systems with
Fibre Channel and SATA using bridging technology. This is a more
elegant and affordable means of providing tiered Fibre Channel and
SATA storage."
The dual-port issue
One potential drawback to the new specification, according to
David Reinsel, director, storage research at IDC, is that it does
not provide a way to support dual-port communication for high
availability on the SATA side without the need for interposer
cards.
"In the end, I think redundancy in Fibre Channel-based systems
is a primary requirement, hence dual port [infrastructures],"
Reinsel wrote to SearchStorage.com in an email. "[FATA] and
[FC-SATA interposers] … give you dual port, while [the new
specification] does not."
As for the new specification, "it tightens up some of the weak
points of the SATA protocol but doesn't resolve the dual-port
requirement," Reinsel said.
"All SATA drives are single ported," responded Smith in an email
to SearchStorage. "Regardless of whether you are using FC or SAS to
access your SATA drive, an interposer card (with a MUX) is required
to achieve dual-ported access -- this is due to a physical
limitation in the design of the SATA drive."
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