Is it Fullsteam ahead for SANs?

Simple Solution

Large enterprises had long experienced the benefits of implementing SANs, but smaller organisations found them expensive, not to mention difficult to install and manage. Deluca said the Simple SAN kit was the biggest trump card in targeting SME.

No SAN story would be complete without touching on the latest architecture battle. Generating intense heat at the moment is the ongoing debate over Fibre Channel (FC) SAN technology versus IP storage (iSCSI).

While Fibre Channel typically rules today, the IP segment is picking up steam, particularly at the lower end of the market, according to local EMC marketing director, Jordan Reizes. That trend is also on the radar for market analysts at Gartner, who predict iSCSI will connect nearly 1.5 million servers to SANs this year - more than any competing technology.

EMC recently aimed its AX150 storage array at small and mid-sized businesses. It expects the latest IP bundle, sold through LAN Systems, to get the attention of resellers servicing the SME arena, particularly end-user organisations with more than 50 employees, because it costs less than $5000. "While IP has been around for awhile, we now have a solution at the right price point," Reizes said.

While Fibre Channel has been the main mode of interconnecting servers and storage devices in SANs for some time, iSCSI is an emerging technology promising lower costs and easier deployment because it uses standard Ethernet technology.

SMBs, in particular, would welcome iSCSI as a means of maximising return on investment, Reizes said, and the reseller learning curve, unlike Fibre Channel, was not so steep.

"The advantage of iSCSI is that it works on a protocol that resellers understand," he said. "It gives them the opportunity to engage customers and leverage existing skill sets."

But Perfekt COM's Keyser predicted Fibre Channel would remain the definite winner in terms of its performance and flexibility. With Fibre Channel, users can transfer more storage from one server to another and have a central point of consumption. He predicted iSCSI would be deployed mainly as secondary storage for backup or migration rather than in primary environments.

"iSCSI hooks up more servers at lower cost but the high performance and flexibility of Fibre Channel is unsurpassed," Keyser said.

NetApp's Heers, however, said IP storage was particularly attractive to SMB because of its lower price tag.

"iSCSI is the fastest growing segment of the storage market," he said.

"It's a really good play for the reseller now that Microsoft has come out and endorsed it."

Microsoft is making its Windows technology a major player in the networked storage environments, he said, and is increasing reseller opportunities by expanding its commitment to iSCSI.

Resellers can do the Exchange or SQL Server implementation - given most mid-market companies are using these technologies or will do so in the next 12 months - and can help with the migration process and the storage networking set up.

But don't get too excited by all the vendor hype surrounding SANs or caught up in the Fibre Channel versus IP debate, Express Data technology development manager, George Kahkejian, said.

Before partners go into an SMB and start firing off the SAN lingo, they should pitch an array of consulting services. These include performing data analysis with storage resource management tools to see whether a company would benefit from changing its current storage strategy to a SAN environment.

Additional Complexity

SANs introduce additional complexity, he said, so the storage needs of many companies still required something simpler and less expensive. Widespread SAN migration was not so simple and cost remained a big stumbling block. Resellers should pitch data management because a simple cleanup and some good old fashioned data analysis is often all that's needed.

"Understand how the company uses its information, what it is, how old it is and how critical it is," Kahkejian said. "Vendors may claim storage arrays are affordable but they are still complex and introduce new management costs.

"Before you go and add another layer of management or infrastructure, let's see what we can do in terms of archiving via software. Before you talk about a SAN, talk about data management. Do some data archiving, analysis and backup to disk or tape.

"Many vendors want to throw a SAN at the problem but it's not always the answer."