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Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. have delivered servers at 1U and 2U, measuring just 1.75 and 3.5 inches high, respectively, to tightly packed data centers. Compaq Computer Corp. even brought out a 1U RISC-based Alpha server. Such compactness lends itself perfectly to Web and application clustering.

At the market's upper end, eight-way servers are flexing some muscle. These servers cleared the hurdle of the four-way architecture, which had reached the limits of its scalability. Based on Intel's Profusion chipsets, the new wave of eight-way servers incorporates a switched crossbar bus to improve performance and scalability. Like their 1U counterparts, enterprise servers are shedding their bulky image. Most major vendors offer eight-way servers in a 7U (12.25-inch) chassis.

Apart from CPU clock speeds creeping up, the market hit a lull this year on the speed front. Most likely, we're experiencing the calm before the storm. Servers based on the long-anticipated Intel IA-64 architecture--built around Intel's Itanium--are scheduled to ship by year's end. Sure, 64-bit hardware and OSes have been around for awhile. But Intel is betting that the added functionality of EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing), which optimizes the way the processor makes predictions, will put Intel's Itanium above the current crop of RISC processors. Itanium-based servers will ship in combinations ranging from four way to 16 way, with clock speeds expected to be in the neighborhood of 800 MHz.

The big picture with IA-64 is that of a unified hardware platform. Compaq, HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems have made plans to support IA-64 with their current operating systems. However, Compaq has its own plans for the high-end market, with its Wildfire servers. These servers will incorporate a 16-way Alpha architecture, running Compaq's updated True64 Unix OS. Until the IA-64 and Wildfire prove their abilities, IBM's AIX and Sun Microsystems' Solaris will continue to dominate the space for e-commerce and ERP (enterprise resource planning).

Storage Area Networks

Many people thought 1999 would be the year of the storage area network--and it almost was. SANs took a huge step in the right direction last year, as vendors both evangelized SANs' strengths and delivered products. During the past two years, early adopters licked their chops over the promise of SANs, only to be disappointed with confusion surrounding uniform standards issues. Organizations such as the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Fibre Channel Industry Association have worked hard to help develop a framework to address issues such as interoperability among HBAs, hubs and switches, as well as to come up with standards to manage the devices on the SAN.

SAN management has been a bit of a mystery, without any way to address resource allocation or device configuration. But the past year saw the adoption of a standardized MIB implementation. This MIB framework makes it possible for management packages to discover and manage compliant-vendor SAN hardware.

As standards fall into place, the SAN market is just beginning to ramp up. With heavy backing from vendors such as EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard and Sun, SANs will be more than just a pipe dream. Our Well-Connected Award-winner for SAN solution provider, HP, is already providing high-speed, bulletproof SAN solutions. SANs debuted using strictly arbitrated-loop technology made solely of fiber hubs. Last year saw the introduction of a slew of new Fibre Channel products--most notably, the induction-switched fabric, which opened the door to the enterprise environment. Companies such as Ancor Communications, Brocade Communications Systems and Vixel Corp. have done a top-notch job getting these switches to market. The fiber switches bring to SANs exactly what Ethernet switches bring to LANs: speed, flexibility and scalability. Recently, Fibre Channel routers have added yet another dimension to backups and disaster recovery (for more on SANs, see "Building a Storage Area Network").

Network-Attached Storage

Network-attached storage (NAS) servers flooded the market the past year, with both enterprise and workgroup markets experiencing a convergence in departmental NAS. By year's end, NAS will be available in a wide range of sizes, from Quantum Corp.'s 10-GB desktop NAS to Network Appliance's 1.4-TB data-center NAS.

NAS servers, such as Network Appliance's F760 Storage Appliance, are without a doubt the Swiss Army knife of storage. A dedicated Novell NetWare or Unix server can serve up files well, but a NAS server rivals a dedicated server and, in many cases, does the job better--meaning faster, more cheaply and more easily. NAS servers generally include support for NFS (Network File System), NCP (NetWare Core Protocol) and SMB (Server Message Block) file services, as well as a complete suite of network protocols. For those worried about security, many NAS servers can be integrated directly into NDS or NIS (Network Information Services), and can perform domain authentication in a Microsoft Windows NT environment. Among the key traits of a NAS server are simplicity of setup and low total cost of ownership. Most NAS servers take less than 15 minutes to configure and bring online. With an embedded OS, NAS servers can significantly reduce management and maintenance hassles by using a Web interface. And with such a high level of versatility, NAS servers are a perfect fit for any network environment.

Tape Backup

In a market that could generally be described as lethargic over the past few years, the pace has quickened to an all-out sprint. DLT (digital linear tape) has long been the market leader in enterprise backup--and Exabyte's 230D DLT tape library won our Editor's Choice award in recent tests. Alternatives from Exabyte, Sony and Tandberg Data, however, have loosened DLT's stranglehold. Exabyte's new Mammoth-2 drive, which we're currently testing in our labs, could be a stiff competitor: It boasts transfer rates of up to 12 MB per second and a compressed capacity of 150 GB using an 8-mm cartridge. Tandberg's new SLR100 drive, meanwhile, offers twice the speed and capacity of previous offerings. The SLR100 is capable of native transfer rates of 5 MB per second and has a compressed capacity of 100 GB. Sony's new AIT-2 drive goes head to head with the SLR100, offering native transfer rates of 6 MB per second and a compressed capacity of 100 GB. SuperDLT and LTO (Linear Tape-Open) are two other tape technologies making their way to market within the next few months.