SNW: What's on First in Orlando

De-duplication, compression, data security, iSCSI, and virtualization will all be on the agenda at the Storage Networking World tradeshow in Orlando, Fla., this week.

We have poked and prodded our way through some of this weeks key announcements ahead of time, in order to provide you with a frame of reference, as well as an early peek. Following is an organized listing of our preview. Click on your area of interest, or read through at will.

See you in sunny Florida -- though, at the moment, it's anything but!

Next Page: Data Reduction

Sun will refresh its VTL product line at SNW this week and also launch its first VTL-based de-duplication offering. The VTL Prime products, available this month, range from the entry-level 3-Tbyte 4302 to the high-end 42-Tbyte 4329.The VTL Prime devices contain de-duplication software from Sun's partner FalconStor and are aimed at mid-sized enterprises, according to Dan Albright, Sun's senior product manager for VTL.

"Many of our customers in the mid-range space have remote offices where they back up data, so from a disaster recovery and a business continuity standpoint, they want to replicate data," says Albright. "The challenge in the past has been the cost of doing that backup and replication."

Because data de-duplication stores only unique changes to the data, the exec says the technology can reduce users' investment in storage capacity.

Pricing for the VTL Prime offering, which consists of Sun’s x4600 server and the vendor's 6140 midrange array, starts at just below $40,000, rising to $300,000.

In addition to the VTL Prime devices, Sun will also unveil the second generation of its VTL Plus technology, which is aimed at high-performance environments.The vendor has introduced four new VTL Plus models, the 1200, the 1202, the 2600, and the 3600, which all work with the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) version 4.0. "This enables version 6.5 of Symantec's NetBackup software to use the VTL as an extension of its media server base," says Albright.

The 1200, 1202, 2600, and 3600 replace Sun's previous VTL Plus offerings, the 1140, 2540, and 3540. By swapping out the earlier version's V40z server and replacing it with "Thumper" x4200 and x4600 hardware, Sun claims to have doubled the performance on its newer boxes.

"Obviously, it varies from configuration and environment, but at the very low end of the family, we can ingest data at 700 Mbytes per second, up to 2200 Mbytes per second," says Albright.

Pricing for the souped-up VTL Plus boxes, which are available now, starts at just over $80,000 for the low-end 8-Tbyte 1200, rising to just over $500,000 for the 896-Tbyte 3600.

Ocarina will officially emerge from stealth this week with the launch of its optimizer appliance, which it is touting as an alternative to traditional de-dupe and compression offerings from the likes of Data Domain and Storwize.Ocarina is one of the more secretive firms that has made it onto our Top 10 Startups List and is still playing its cards close to its chest.

Although Carter George, Ocarina's vice president of products, claims a 10:1 data reduction ratio on the likes of PowerPoints and PDFs, he's not forthcoming on how it's done. "It’s not de-dupe, and it’s not compression; it’s a set of algorithms that we wrote ourselves," says George. "There’s a lot of new math in there, things that people haven't done before."

The exec tells Byte and Switch that Ocarina has some 112 patents out for the algorithm, which it calls "Extract, Correlate, and Optimize (ECO)," and confirmed that this uses elements of both compression and de-duplication.

The startup appears to be gaining some traction, at least according to George. Ocarina's early adopters include seven of the top 10 online photo sites and three of the top five social networking sites, he claims.

Pricing for the Ocarina optimizer appliance starts at $75,000, plus an additional $25,000 license for the software used to read data from storage devices.Next Page: Security

Hewlett-Packard will overhaul its storage security offerings today with a souped-up fabric switch, enhanced key management, and an encryption kit for tape libraries and autoloaders.

First up is the C-Series MDS 9000 Storage Media Encryption (SME) switch. "That allows you to encrypt data through any port on the switch," says Adam Thew, HP’s director of products for nearline products. "It’s basically targeted at legacy tape."

HP’s C-Series MDS 9000 is OEM'd from Cisco, although the technology can be deployed either as a dedicated switch -- the MDS 9222i -- or as a blade for HP's 9000 series switches.

The MDS 9222i encryption switch, plus its software license, is available now, priced at $83,500. The 18/4 encryption blade is also available now, priced at around $50,000, plus a $27,995 software license.The vendor will also turn its attention to key management and compliance this week, integrating its Secure Key Manager and Compliance Log Warehouse devices. "It’s an API-level integration that we have done that is invisible to the IT administrator," says Thew.

Pricing for the Secure Key Manager starts at $100,000, and the Compliance Log Warehouse has a list price of $225,000. Both devices are currently available, although HP says that there is no additional cost for the software client used to open their APIs.

HP will also launch its StorageWorks Encryption Kit today, a memory-stick-sized device for storing keys from single tape libraries and autoloaders. "It plugs into a USB port on the back of the autoloader or MSL library, and it generates and manages the keys for the encryption process," says Thew.

The Encryption Kit, which is available in June, is priced at $2,500.

Robobak unveiled version 8 of its eponymous remote data protection software today, adding agentless CDP capabilities, which the vendor is touting as a way to easily schedule repeated backup operations.Other enhancements to version 8 include auto-deployment, which senses new computers that are added to the network and adds them to scheduled backups, and remote bare-metal recovery. Robobak has also extended the list of databases supported by the product, and it added simultaneous file replication to multiple sites.

Next Page: iSCSI

Fujitsu will announce its UDS 2000 device this week, which it describes as a unified data storage system. "This means that it has both block and file access built into the same platform," says Jim DeCaires, Fujitsu's storage product marketing manager. "From a file access basis it is a NAS system, and from a block access basis it is iSCSI."

The exec tells Byte and Switch that the NAS/iSCSI combo enables user access to different types of storage over the same network. "Otherwise, they have to manage two types of network: their LAN network and their Fibre Channel SAN network -- this brings them both together."

The 4U, rackmount UDS 2000 can scale up to 72 drives for a capacity of 54 Tbytes, and it also contains Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server software. Fujitsu is not the only vendor to throw its weight behind the Microsoft WUDSS technology, and the UDS 2000 is up against Dell's NX1950, HP's DL380G5, and NetApp's FAS2020.Pricing for the UDS 2000, which is available next month, starts at $30,000.

The vendor will also unveil a business continuity service aimed at SMBs this week. Based on WAN optimization features within Fujitsu's Eternus storage systems, the service essentially links primary and secondary storage systems as part of a pre-packaged hardware, software, and services bundles.

"The bundle that we're selling can optimize bandwidth over 465 miles," says DeCaires, adding that the package includes two Eternus storage systems (one of which is hosted by Verizon); Fujitsu's Advanced Copy Manager replication software; and 12 months worth of DS3 connectivity.

The service, which Fujitsu describes as its Affordable Business Continuity offering, is available next month. The vendor says that initial pricing for the hardware, software, and services bundle will be somewhere under $200,000.

Blade specialist Verari will unveil its SB5165 StorageServer today, which it is promoting as the industry's first blade-based NAS iSCSI appliance. The blade system, which fits into Verari's BladeRack 2 XL, can hold up to 24 Tbytes of data and is aimed at users looking to handle storage for virtual servers, media and entertainment, and disaster recovery."Because it's iSCSI and Gigabit Ethernet-based, it makes it easy to move the data," says Eric Seidman, storage systems manager at Verari. "We see a lot of demand for iSCSI in the server virtualization space, driven by Xen and VMware."

The SB5165 will be generally available in May. It also contains storage management software OEM'd from Open-E. The device has a list price of $48,000 for a storage controller blade and two disk blades, each of which holds 12 terabytes.

StorMagic has unveiled a new pricing model for its iSCSI SAN management software, specifically targeting SMBs. A new server-based pricing model lets customers scale according to the number of Windows-based servers instead of by capacity. The pricing accompanies a new StorMagic SM Series 2.1 iSCSI SAN for SMBs that supports LSI MegaRAID SAS/SATA adapters.

Open-E will announce a co-marketing deal with AMD today. "That’s going to involve working with AMD resellers to tune and test our software," says Sonny Banga, Open-E's director of business development. "They are going to resell a complete hardware and software bundle which is primarily targeted at the SMB market."

The first of these resellers, Genstor Systems, will be announced this week, according to Banga.Next Page: SAS

Intel and LSI have joined forces in a partnership to bolster both firms' RAID strategies today, announcing a technical collaboration based on LSI’s MegaRAID SAS/SATA adapters, which run on servers and host-based disk drives.

"This is about how RAID will be deployed in Intel-based server and workstation platforms," says Seth Bobroff, general manager of Intel's storage business. The exec was unwilling to divulge product specifics but confirmed that this will focus on multi-core processor technology, virtualization, and advanced RAID processing.

"We’re not able to talk about when these technologies will be coming to market, but the engineering work is progressing," he adds.

At this stage, LSI's MegaRAID can only work with single-core processors, although the vendor has been open about its desire to boost its SAS strategy.Dot Hill will use this week's show to take the wraps off its first front-end SAS offering, the 2530 device, a 2-rack-unit-high device which is being aimed at SMBs.

"We're primarily targeting this at SCSI replacement and the blade market," says Mike Phelan, Dot Hill's product manager. "We're aiming this at SMBs because those are the environments where direct-attached storage is heavily ingrained."

The 2530, which is up against IBM's DS3000 SAS offering, contains 12 drives, which can be a combination of SAS or SATA in the same chassis. The Dot Hill device offers a maximum capacity of 12 Tbytes, although this can be expanded to 56 Tbytes by adding additional JBOD.

Dot Hill has also built data protection into the 2530, according to the exec, who explained that snapshots, volume copies, and RAID 6 are features of the product. "RAID 6 gives you capability to lose two disk drives without any loss of data," Phelan says. "This has become a key feature as individual disk sizes grow."

The 2530, which will be available in July, has a starting list price of around $13,500.PMC-Sierra will take the wraps off two 6-Gbit/s SAS 2 expanders today. The PM8004 SXP 24x6GSEC and PM8005 SXP 36x6GSEC, which probably have the longest product names at this year's SNW, enable 6-Gig connectivity to SAS and SATA hard drives.

"The 6-Gig line speed gives you increased throughput and increased connectivity," says Andrew Dieckmann, PMC-Sierra's product marketing manager. "You can also use this technology to aggregate two 3-Gig connections into a single 6-Gig link."

With the SAS 2 standard nearing release, PMC-Sierra hopes to tap into its promised benefits, such as higher link speeds and better manageability thanks to its 10-meter cabling distance, four meters more than SAS 1. "It decreases the cabling complexity and increases the flexibility of how the SAS JBods are connected together," says Dieckmann.

The exec says that the expanders are currently being beta tested by a number of storage OEMs, with general availability expected to be in the late third or early fourth quarter of this year.

Seagate is shipping a 1-Tbyte SAS drive it claims improves performance 135 percent over SATA technology overall. The vendor also claims SAS boosts IOPS per watt by 38 percent. OEMs include Bell Microproducts and HP. Prices aren't being released, but spokespeople say the unit will likely have roughly a 30 percent premium over the vendor’s 1-Tbyte SATA drive, which are selling for about $300 apiece to OEMs. Suggested applications include "nearline" applications such as video surveillance gear and collaborative applications like email or messaging. Seagate has had its 1-Tbyte SATA drive out since last year.Xyratex, which will be demo'ing its recently announced SP1224s, a scaled-down version of OneStor systems, which it claims can offer high IOPs with low energy consumption.

Next Page: Virtualization

BlueArc will announce a partnership with VMware this week, which is part of the vendor's strategy to offer third-party file services.

The partnership, which comes just a week after VMware's rival, Citrix, announced a deal with NetApp, is just the latest example of the converging worlds of server and storage virtualization.

BlueArc recently opened up the APIs on its Titan 3000 Series of NAS hardware and has now certified VMware's flagship ESX Server to run on its products. "VMware really virtualizes the server resource, and BlueArc virtualizes the storage resources," said Jon Affeld, BlueArc's senior director of product marketing. "This gives you the end capability of server and storage virtualization."The exec adds that the VMware certification covers both NFS and iSCSI storage. "We think that there are a number of advantages to using NFS with VMware, even though traditionally it has been used with iSCSI," he says. "If you use NFS, you get all the things that come with it -- you get built-in security, built-in data protection, and all the file services like snapshots, replication, and backup."

BlueArc claims that its hardware can support up to 64,000 concurrent VMs and also boasts the ability to map storage resources directly to ESX server or its virtual machines. "If you move your VMs around, all of the policies and the mapping for the storage goes with it," says Affeld.

NetApp's StoreVault and Virtual Iron Software have certified each other's products. The result is that StoreVault's SAN/NAS combination platform for SMBs can use Virtual Iron's virtualized server environments to further consolidate computing and eliminate the costs of adding file servers.

DataCore is introducing SANharmony, a new software platform that integrates virtualized storage with virtual servers. The first iteration will apply thin provisioning, data protection, and caching to NAS volumes. The vendor is also releasing new packaging for its products to fit virtualized environments from Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, Citrix, Sun, and Virtual Iron. Called Feature-Packed Virtual Storage Solutions, the products support capacities ranging from 2 TBytes to 32 TBytes and are priced from $4,500.

Another vendor flogging its virtual wares this week is desktop virtualization startup Install Free, which emerged from stealth today with its first product offering. The Install Free Bridge is a software script that runs on a local PC and communicates with Active Directory and Install Free's Management Console software, which runs on the Active Directory server."We're virtualizing any Windows-based desktop application such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Adobe, or Quicken," says David Karofsky, vice president of marketing at Install Free. "This means that the virtual applications do not need to be installed on the host PC." The Install Free Bridge and the Management Console are available today, priced at $100 per user for a three-year license, plus an additional 18 percent annual maintenance charge.

3Leaf Systems announced its Virtual Compute strategy, today, which aims to tie I/O, memory, and CPU virtualization together. Last week the vendor revealed that it is licensing Intel's Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) for sharing information between processors, and has already clinched a similar deal to license AMD's HyperTransport technology. The startup already ships an I/O virtualization device, and the vendor says its offerings including the AMD technology will be available next year, with solutions based on Intel's QPI coming in 2010.

STORServer has released a new VMware Consolidated Backup agent for its Business Continuity Appliance, which deploys Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) in LAN environments. The new agent, available April 15, will cost from $1,598, based on the number of virtual machines managed.

F5 will release results of an end-user survey this week, which reveals that storage virtualization is poised for explosive growth. Some 21 percent of U.S. companies currently use some form of storage virtualization, and another 26 percent are planning to implement it.

The figures for Europe are slightly higher, with 37 percent of users currently working with storage virtualization, and another 24 percent looking to deploy it.The survey, which encompassed 324 IT managers on both sides of the Atlantic, also highlighted some of the reasons why users are avoiding storage virtualization. Just under a fifth of European respondents and a third of U.S. IT managers cited complexity, cost, and the demands of other, more pressing initiatives.

Next Page: ...and More

Other Storage Systems

Pillar will take the wraps off a souped-up version of its storage devices this week, complete with a set of pre-packaged services for LUN creation and other functions. Pillar says the Axiom 500MC, which can handle up to 1.6 Pbytes of storage, is aimed at applications like CRM and ERP, as well as email. List price for the device, which competes with EMC's DMX 1000 and DMX 800, starts at $475,000.

e-Discovery

CommVault is adding a series of features to its Simpana 7.0 platform, including compliance and e-discovery modules that simplify Legal Hold by giving managers the ability to lock down information across all copies in storage, even in single-instance storage environments.

The vendor also combines replication and single instance storage in Simpana in order to transfer de-duplicated data from one location to another, without requiring managers to check or change anything at remote sites. And the vendor has added support for Linux operating systems and Microsoft 64-bit environments in order to improve reporting and storage management. CommVault won’t give license pricing for the new features, saying it varies with the configuration. Simpana is priced anywhere from $5,000 to multiple millions.Mimosa will announce a partnership with Nexsan this week to build archiving solutions. This will enable users to create and enforce retention policies for email, IM, and file, according to the vendors, and also provide a text search index for legal, regulatory, and compliance content.

InfiniBand

SGI is adding a new high-end InfiniBand-powered storage system, the InfiniteStorage 4600, to the line of products powered by LSI controllers. Citing applications that require "extreme bandwidth" as the likeliest places to use the new systems, SGI spokespeople say they can offer more than 6 Gbytes/second of host-side bandwidth -- three times the performance of SGI's existing 4500 system. The InfiniteStorage 4600 supports up to 512 partitions and 2,048 Fibre Channel log-ins, the vendor claims. On the downside, the system won’t support InfiniBand DDR (20 Gbit/s) or 8-Gbit/s Fibre Channel until September. QDR (40-Gbit/s) InfiniBand is on the roadmap for early 2009. SGI says software will differentiate the 4600 from competitors like IBM's DS series and Sun's 6000 series. Pricing isn't available, but typical systems average $500,000.

CDP

Double-Take Software has added CDP to its replication software by repackaging TimeData, the product it acquired with the purchase of TimeSpring late in 2007. Double-Take has moved TimeData onto the latest version of SQL and reduced the price by nearly 40 percent.

Email Management

PostPath is collaborating with EMC around email management, integrating its eponymous email server with EMC's Clariion and CX3 UltraScale systems. The vendors claim that the integration will enable PostPath users to exploit EMC's tiered storage, including Fibre Channel and SATA drives.

Apple Storage

ATTO Technology today announced its FastStream storage controller software for Apple Xserve RAID systems. Scheduled for release later this month, ATTO claims that FastStream can aggregate multiple Xserve RAIDs together, pushing performance up to 750 Mbytes/s.PCI Express

Fusion-io will start shipping its ioDrive technology today and will demonstrate the 80-Gbyte, 160-Gbyte, and 320-Gbyte NAND drives at SNW.

Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.