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  5. Top Ten Private Storage Networking Companies: Page 23 of 26
Data Centers

Top Ten Private Storage Networking Companies: Page 23 of 26

A brand new Website deserves a brand new Top 10 list, we always say. It’s not a new concept, of course. We borrowed the idea for a Top 10 list from our sister publication, Light Reading. (They, in turn, pinched...
June 13, 2001

Troika makes “intelligent” HBAs (host bus adapters) that use a new
protocol called Virtual Interface (VI) to connect servers together on an
Ethernet network. Troika will compete with Emulex Corp. (Nasdaq: EMLX), QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC),
and JNI Corp. (Nasdaq: JNIC) –

all of which also are planning VI implementations.

Troika’s first product is designed for installation in TCP/IP server
“clusters,” where servers are strung together and managed as a single system
on an Ethernet network.

Skidmore claims his adapters improve application performance on these
networks by using VI to bypass the server OS and TCP stack – eliminating
the overhead caused by processing TCP communications. He says the
number of instructions requiring CPU processing is reduced to 50 with VI –
from 7,000 with TCP.

Getting the applications vendors to add VI code has not been a problem
for Troika so far. IBM Corp.’s
(NYSE: IBM) DB2 database is supported, as is Microsoft Corp.’s (Nasdaq:
MSFT) SequelServer, Oracle Corp.’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) database applications, Veritas Software’s clustering
code, and Network
Appliance Inc.’s (Nasdaq: NTAP) data filer applications. As far as
hardware adoption of VI goes, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) is an
investor in the company, which bodes well for VI’s chances of being widely
implemented on server hardware platforms.

Today the product supports Ethernet only, but Troika is migrating to
VI-over-Fibre Channel this year and VI-over-Infiniband by the end of 2002.

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