Better buzz, higher energy Storage Networking World fall 2003.

This fall's Storage Networking World unveiled some new friends and some old foes. The strident screams from current and would-be users seemed to drown out the harmonic hums of the interoperability lab, while the breakout sessions touted topics that seemed more like re-churned rhetoric from the late '90s.

Despite the slow progress on age-old topics like interoperability, storage management and disaster recovery, there was something new this year that I haven't noticed at SNW in the past--a certain buzz of customers that felt like a tradeshow of years gone by. The end-user attendees at this fall's event seemed more attentive, more informed, more interested and more numbered.

The breakout sessions were dedicated to familiar topics like storage management, interoperability and disaster recovery. The session headlines could well have been ripped out of SNW 2000. The presentations were refreshed, but hardly refreshing. The same frustrations that IT organizations battled with years ago, continue to plague the industry today. The difference between then and now: It seems that the vendors are beginning to listen.

The adoption of SNIA storage management interface, SMI-S, is a good first step to bringing interoperability and manageability to the data center (and perhaps even changing the topics of next year's sessions). Whether or not IT shops actually find vendors cooperating within the SMI-S framework may be another story (flashback to CIM 1998).

Conspicuously absent from the sessions were any performance-related topics. Have we given up on fighting the access density problems the industry faces, or simply redirected our energies elsewhere?

The tradeshow floor was filled with some new buzzwords, some recycled lexicon and some familiar names. Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), iSCSI, SMI-S and SATA seemed to capture the interests of attendees and fill the hype-coffers of the vendors.

The major storage vendors devoted a large part of their real estate to ILM. Although the concept is a familiar one (read HSM), the theoretical implementation is new. In its perfect form, data seamlessly moves from more expensive, highly available on-line resources to less expensive, nearline or even offline resources. The data moves using policy automation, and scours the network for the appropriate desired storage platform. There are some real products from real vendors (although proprietary) that can help companies take the first steps toward ILM nirvana, but to actually realize the dream is still years away, in my estimation.

"Got SATA?" read the flashing buttons from one popular storage manufacturer. While many vendors were sporting SATA gear, there was little agreement on how far SATA could make it into the enterprise (flashback to the early parallel SCSI days?). The new 2.5-inch SATA form factor could prove especially promising given the reduced physical, electrical, heat and economic requirements of the drives. Enterprise disk makers may not be especially eager to watch their margin-rich enterprise drives be swallowed up by the wafer-thin margins of their 2.5-inch SATA drives. However, one drive enclosure maker, JMR, was already packaging the first 2.5-inch 10,000-RPM SATA drive into a six-bay drive enclosure.

Nestled in the back of the show floor, was the interoperability lab; where allies and adversaries met to "all just get along" if but only for a few days. Of all the advancements that the show has made over its short life, the accomplishments in the lab may be the most significant. As in years past, the lab demonstrated a variety of 'real-world' applications supported by multiple vendors across an array of topologies. This year's working demonstrations featured SMI-S, iSCSI, long-haul replication simulation, interoperating switches and more. It was encouraging to see such a diverse set of products and vendors all working together for the common good of the make-believe enterprise. (Too bad every installation in the real world doesn't include installation services from the top technical talent of every vendor working together around the clock with their own company's engineering experts close at hand.)

On the whole, SNW showed promise. The greatest value may have come from vendors and customers all sharing concerns and priorities. If there was ever any question whether or not SNW would become a meaningful show or not, I think the answer was clear after this fall's event. With end-user attendees on the rise, more broad support from major vendors like Microsoft, and more opportunities for users to have their voices heard, Storage Networking World could prove to be a valuable resource for the IT and storage community alike.

Dan McCormick is a freelance writer covering mass storage topics.