Industry Forum To Assure IP Benefits For Tape.

In a setting more reminiscent of a disco than a technical conference, major manufacturers in the tape backup hardware and software industry took first steps towards organizing a marketing and technology forum to assure that advances in peripheral connectivity accommodate tape technologies. The hosting company was Boulder, CO-based Spectra Logic.

The focus was on IP protocols, and presentations were made on iSCSI SoIP, NDMP, VI, and more. The message was mixed regarding Fibre Channel, the most technologically advanced transport protocol in the storage networking space. On the one hand, FC took a considerable beating for the high component and per-port costs. Current IDC figures suggest that perport cost for FC implementation ranges between $800 and $1000. On the other hand, attendees acknowledged that FC should continue to improve its share figures, at least in the near term. It was also acknowledged that IP solutions that cooperated with FC are a clear option.

Industry expert Michael Peterson keynoted the event, discussing the emergence of IP tape as a function of both externalization of the data center and server disaggregation. He predicted that IP storage will dominate after 2004, breaking a historical trend of five-year cycles for a technology to take hold in a marketplace. He also predicted that Fibre Channel technology will plateau within three years, peaking at about a 40% share of market.

Peterson's message continued with discussions of the requirements to bring IP storage, for tape or any other technology to fruition. The list, which included a hardware infrastructure marked by interoperability, new storage management tools, and security, is virtually identical to the factors that have been limiting SAN growth in the enterprise.

Protocol Overviews

Subsequent speakers in the series of presentations explored various IP protocols and their connection with storage, especially tape storage. Leading off was Anthony James, who offered a look at Gigabit Ethernet as an alternative for storage networking. He identified GE as a mature standard, boasting proven interoperability, scalability, and fault tolerance. [Editor's Note: 10Gbit Ethernet is expected later this year.) He followed with a short discussion of Foundry's Ethernet strategy, known as SWAN: Storage Wide Area Network. The Foundry approach sends Ethernet over SONET, implementing high bandwidth MAN and WAN connectivity.

Well-known connectivity technologist Tom Clark followed up with a presentation on Storage over IP, highlighting the vision of Nishan Systems (See a discussion of Nishan's new products on p. 35 of last month's CTR). Author of a book on Fibre Channel technology, he identified the key issues surrounding FC: perceived difficulty to implement, interoperability, and immature software management tools. But Clark took a step beyond the usual claims. He identified that end devices have matured in terms of interoperability but the multi-vendor fabrics have not. He also suggested that FC costs exhibit an artificial inflation in margins.

Clark also pointed out that there were issues with the emerging iSCSI standard. iSCSI must use a special implementation engine to deal with TPC overhead. Further, Clark feels that iSCSI is not enterprise SAN ready. He suggests that it is a low-end solution, but was clear that iSCSI was appropriate for lower bandwidth applications like tape backup.

Subsequent speakers discussed native Ethernet SANs, VI (the Intel-inspired API that addresses I/O latency and high CPU loads), and NDMP, the open protocol for enterprise network-based data management that enjoys broadly-based support.

Part and parcel of the presentations were product discussions illustrating the delivery of IP to the tape marketplace. Spectra Logic took the opportunity to announce its new Tape Appliance Operating system architecture for IP. Known as TAOS, it is a TCP/IP-based architecture, implemented using open systems standards including NDMP, iSCSI, and others, including the company's proprietary Internet Tape Protocol.

SNIA SNIF

At the end of the presentation series, the presenters entertained questions in a panel discussion format. Peterson followed with an invitation to formally organize, identifying objectives and a charter that would embrace application transparency, performance, reliability, availability, security, and management issues. The proposal offered the Storage Networking Industry Association as an operating umbrella under their SNIF program.

SNIA has established a venue for industry advocacy groups to operate; the groups form Storage Networking Industry Forum operations. One of the earliest was for iSCSI. The new group proposed by Peterson and moving spirit Spectra Logic would be a subgroup under SNIA' s existing IP Storage SNIF.

The moving spirits of the conference had hoped to develop a press release announcing who the players would be and what events came next. This release was not ready at press time, but the list of participants includes Spectra Logic, Ecrix, Nishan Systems, Sony, Benchmark, Hewlett Packard, and Legato. The next several weeks will likely involve setting up their charter and establishing the mechanics of their SNIA relationships.

Avoid The Gorilla

Peterson had sensibly noted during his presentation that the storage industry didn't always learn from history. The forming of a new consortium supporting IP protocols for tape seems a sensible idea, especially to assure that infrastructure developers do not neglect tape storage as a beneficiary of the growing transport protocols.

But the commitment to open standards needs to be a top-down matter of corporate policy for all the new signatories to the new SNIF. Otherwise, history may repeat itself in terms of a technology that was slowed due to an 800-pound gorilla who gains major market share, and decides that open standards are much less important than high margins and substantial sales. This group, and all groups like it, must formally commit to open standards, otherwise it will be just another group preaching to itself, and with as much consequence.