Top Five Storage Technologies for 2011

January 10, 2011 – Any top technologies list is somewhat (totally?) arbitrary. Do you pick them based on how interesting the technologies are? How much end-user interest is behind them? The extent to which the technologies will benefit end users? How much revenue they’ll generate? Or all of the above? Let’s go with “all of the above.”

Here’s my list of some of the key storage technologies for this year (in no particular order), with links to related in-depth features and recent product news articles from InfoStor and our partner site Enterprise Storage Forum.

#1. Solid-state disk (SSD) drives

2011 will finally be The Year of SSDs. All of the major disk array vendors now offer SSDs (mostly from STEC, although competition will heat up significantly this year). Prices are declining rapidly as volumes increase and technology improves. Some vendors are positioning relatively inexpensive multi-level cell (MLC), as opposed to single-level cell (SLC), NAND flash for enterprise duty. SSD and controller vendors have solved most of the issues around reliability and endurance which, together with the price declines, eliminate the primary gating factors to end-user adoption of SSDs.

Market researcher IDC predicts that the total SSD market will grow at a 58% CAGR in unit shipments and a 44% CAGR in revenues over the next few years.

The fastest growing segment of the overall market is enterprise-class SSDs, where unit shipment are expected to surge at a CAGR of 74%, and revenues are expected to grow at a 54% clip, through 2014.

IDC expects the total SSD market to exceed $7 billion in 2014.

Related articles:

Why solid state drives won’t replace spinning disk (Enterprise Storage Forum)

Fixing SSD performance degradation, part 1 (Enterprise Storage Forum)

Fixing SSD performance degradation, part 2 (Enterprise Storage Forum)

SSDs hit mainstream stride

Intel ships miniature SSDs

SSD update: Toshiba, OCZ

Hitachi GST enters SSD market

STEC scores OEM win with IBM for MLC SSDs

LSI ships SSD-based accelerator card

#2. Data reduction (data deduplication and/or compression) for primary storage

Just like data deduplication for secondary storage swept the market and became mainstream over the last couple years, data reduction for primary storage will gain traction in end-user adoption over the next two years.

Interest in data reduction for primary storage picked up significantly last year due in large part to a number of factors, including NetApp’s evangelizing the technology, IBM’s acquisition of Storwize, Dell’s acquisition of Ocarina, and the entry of startups such as BridgeSTOR.

Related articles:

IBM to buy Storwize for real-time data compression (Enterprise Storage Forum)

Dell to acquire Ocarina for data deduplication

Startup BridgeSTOR enters data reduction market

Musings on the future of data dedupe (blog post)

Data deduplication: Permabit finds success with OEM model (blog post)

#3. Cloud storage

A few years after the term ‘cloud storage’ was introduced, vendors and users are still debating what it is. Let’s just call it storage-as-a-service, whether internal (private) or external (public, or hosted). There were probably more product/service announcements regarding cloud storage last year than any other technology. And there’s little doubt that will continue in 2011.

Related articles:

SNIA forms Cloud Backup and Recovery SIG

SNIA develops standards for cloud storage

SNIA completes cloud storage standard

Guidelines for implementing cloud storage

EMC debuts self-service platform for cloud storage

F5 ARX appliances integrate with cloud storage

#4. Data center convergence

Data center convergence can be viewed as the unification of storage, servers and networks, or, as the convergence of networks. In the context of the latter, we’ll see increased end-user interest in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in 2011, which was stalled over the last year due in part to the slump in IT spending. But as the IT world moves to 10GbE, the old FCoE-vs.-iSCSI debate will be renewed this year (with a lot of the debate centered on performance and cost issues).

I also expect a lot of controversy over the various approaches to converged (10GbE/FC/iSCSI) adapters, which are usually referred to as converged network adapters (CNAs). Expect a battle royale between vendors such as Emulex, QLogic, Intel, Broadcom and others.

Related articles:

Guidelines for FCoE deployment

FCoE I/O convergence and virtualization

Brocade moves FCoE beyond top-of-rack (Enterprise Storage Forum)

Broadcom claims 2 million+ IOPS on converged controller (blog post)

Intel’s card play in unified networking (10GbE+iSCSI+FCoE)

#5. Storage solutions for virtual servers and desktops

There has been a lot of innovation from storage vendors as well as virtual server platform vendors over the last few years in the area of optimizing storage for virtual server environments, particularly in disk arrays and backup/recovery software. But this year, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments will take off, and just as virtual servers created a lot of storage challenges, so will VDI.

According to a Client Virtualization Straw Poll conducted by CDW, which surveyed 200 IT managers, 91% of the respondents plan to implement some form of client virtualization within the next 12 to 24 months. The primary drivers behind adoption of client virtualization are improved operational efficiency and reduced costs (expected savings were estimated at 20% of the IT budget, according to early adopters).

Related articles:

Storage considerations for VDI implementations

Seven steps to a successful VDI implementation

FalconStor adds VDI support to SAN Accelerator


Related blog post: The Top Ten storage acquisitions of 2010

Intel’s card play in unified networking (10GbE+iSCSI+FCoE)

November 3, 2010 – InfoStor has been covering converged, or unified, networks and the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FcoE) protocol for years, but most of our product-oriented coverage has been centered on adapters from vendors such as Emulex and QLogic. Those vendors are clearly out in front in this space, both from a time-to-market and market share perspective, but there are other vendors with host adapters for converged networks, and we’ve been remiss in not covering a little player called Intel.
First, a note on terminology: Vendors such as QLogic and Emulex use the term converged network adapter (CNA) to describe cards that support protocols such as 10GbE, Data Center Bridging (DCB), iSCSI and FCoE. Other vendors, such as Broadcom, are expected to use the term Converged Network Interface Card, or C-NIC.

Intel doesn’t use either of those terms, referring to the technology in general as “unified networking” or just referring to its Ethernet X520 Server Adapter card.

Intel’s approach to unified network cards is architecturally different from the CNA approach taken by vendors such as Emulex and QLogic. With CNAs, protocols (and protocol offload functionality) are implemented on the CNA, which architecturally is similar to a host bus adapter (HBA).

In contrast, Intel uses native initiators for FCoE and iSCSI that are implemented in the host operating system (Windows and Linux) kernel. Thus Intel’s use of the term “open FCoE.”

“We rely on native protocols in the OS kernel, so it’s free and easy to implement and use,” says Sunil Ahluwalia, senior manager of product marketing in Intel’s LAN Access Division. “CNAs are special-purpose adapters that are more complex and costly.”

Intel’s Ethernet X520 Server Adapter has an MSRP of $799 (and often sells for considerably less), which is about half the price of CNAs.

Rather than implementing hardware-based full offload of the storage-over-Ethernet protocols, Intel offloads only the data path part of the protocol.

“We have what we call ‘intelligent offload,’” says Ahluwalia. “We don’t offload the full protocol because we don’t think that’s required, and full offload adds complexity and cost to the cards because you need processing engines, memory, etc. on the card, which also adds power requirements.”

Performance

CNA vendors have historically claimed that the native initiator approach (a) lacked full support for protocols such as FCoE (which is no longer the case) and (b) had relatively poor performance.

Intel begs to differ. However, it’s important to note that all vendors in this space can point to internal or third-party testing that shows superior performance for their products. As always, benchmark results should be taken with a grain of salt.

“Intel and Microsoft demonstrated one million IOPS with native iSCSI earlier this year, but the question was: Who needs that level of performance in real-life applications?,” says Ahluwalia, “so we performed some tests [with Demartek] running applications such as Exchange and SQL and we found little difference in performance between a CNA and an initiator approach.”

For full info on the testing procedures and results, see Demartek’s “Intel 10GbE Adapter Performance Evaluation for FCoE and iSCSI.” (Demartek’s site has a lot of other interesting FCoE-related content).

“We found that the performance of the Intel X520 adapter was comparable to competitive 10Gb FCoE adapters for a broad spectrum of tests,” said Dennis Martin, Demartek’s president. “Because the adapter performance was reasonably close in most of these tests, IT professionals need to consider the cost of these adapters, especially in environments where many adapters are required.”

Intel’s Ahluwalia also claims that the native initiator approach does not consume a lot of CPU cycles (another criticism of this approach).

To take one example from the Demartek tests: In a Microsoft Exchange Jetstress benchmark with 5,000 mailboxes, Intel’s card/initiator consumed only about 2% CPU utilization.

But you really have to take a close look at the Demartek tests, as well as testing of CNAs conducted by other vendors and third parties, to get to the bottom of the performance claims in the unified, or converged, network adapter market.

Related article: QLogic announces 10GbE NICs, CNAs

iSCSI vs. FCoE, part deux

May 14, 2010 – It’s an age-old debate – iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel – but in light of all the hubbub around Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), the debate is heating up again.

If you follow the FCoE news, you’d think that converged networks based on FCoE are an IT inevitability. Eventually (it’s going to be a very slow adoption curve) that may be true, but I think it will be more in the Fortune 1000 space – where the benefits of FCoE will be most apparent – rather than in the SMB space, where low cost is still king.

FCoE provides the ability to run storage traffic over Ethernet (although you have to upgrade to 10GbE and Converged Enhanced Ethernet, or Data Center Bridging), but iSCSI also enables storage traffic over Ethernet – at a much lower cost. And, as with FCoE, you can preserve existing investments.

Running storage traffic over Ethernet is a no-brainer, but it doesn’t require FCoE. Cost-conscious SMBs may find iSCSI more palatable. And if part of your convergence and cost cutting revolves around virtualization, iSCSI (or NAS) may make even more sense. Plus, it’s a simpler and faster route to a converged network.

Of course, the old argument against iSCSI was, in part, related to performance. But that was when the argument centered on 1Gbps Ethernet vs. 4Gbps Fibre Channel. Now that iSCSI can run on 10Gbps Ethernet (as can Fibre Channel via FCoE), those performance-oriented arguments are crumbling.

But don’t take my word for it.

openBench Labs (which contributes lab reviews to InfoStor), recently set up an interesting test case by building a modest, inexpensive 10GbE iSCSI storage network that turned in some impressive performance results.

You’ll have to read the full review to put some perspective on the performance numbers, but openBench Labs CTO Jack Fegreus clocked average throughput of 5,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) with one virtual machine (VM), which was in line with what openBench Labs achieved with direct Fibre Channel access to the same disk array in previous tests. With two VMs, throughput scaled to about 8,200 IOPS.

Jack concludes his review with this observation: “Given these results, our 10GbE iSCSI configuration with QLogic Intelligent Ethernet Adapters should be able to support the installation of Microsoft Exchange Server on a VM with upwards of 5,000 mail boxes.” Quite sufficient for most SMBs. “The simplest and most immediate strategy for IT to begin leveraging 10GbE in a data center, especially when dealing with a virtual environment, is to begin implementing iSCSI.”

Jack’s 10GbE iSCSI network consisted of three Dell PowerEdge servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMware ESX Server 4; iSCSI software from StarWind; dual-port 10GbE Ethernet adapters and 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs from QLogic; and a Xiotech Emprise 5000 disk array with two 4Gbps Fibre Channel ports. Performance was measured with Intel’s Iometer benchmark.

Check out the full review: “How to jumpstart SAN + LAN convergence.”

Related blog posts:
Virtual server SANs: FC vs. iSCSI vs. NAS
Intel, Microsoft top 1,000,000 IOPS in iSCSI tests
Video surveillance is a real sweet spot for iSCSI
NAS gains in virtual server environments

And you might want to consider attending this upcoming (May 26) SNIA Webcast: “iSCSI and New Approaches to Backup and Recovery.”

Gartner on FCoE: The rebuttal

March 25, 2010 – Earlier this week I blogged about a Gartner press release and report that purported to point out the flaws behind the pro-FCoE arguments. Essentially, Gartner analyst Joe Skorupa argues that Fibre Channel over Ethernet may not, in fact, reduce the number of switches and ports, nor the power and cooling requirements, in a converged network. He also argues that a converged network could be more difficult to manage than two separate networks (Ethernet and Fibre Channel).

For the full press release and a link to the ($195) report, see my previous post, “Gartner exposes FCoE ‘myths.’”

Predictably, those views set off some controversial fireworks, in part because (for better or for worse) Gartner holds a lot of sway in the IT world, which is where the FCoE battle will eventually be fought. For the best rebuttal to Gartner’s arguments that I’ve seen so far, see J Michel Metz’s “Gartner on FCoE: Whoa There, Sparky.”

I’m just glad to see the FCoE discussions moving away from arguments about which vendor is best-positioned to take advantage of FCoE toward more discussions about the technological merits and hurdles involved with the technology.

Gartner exposes FCoE "myths"

March 19, 2010 – Much of the talk about the demise of Fibre Channel relates to its prospects as a disk drive interface, where it is rapidly losing ground against SAS and SATA drives. But Fibre Channel as a SAN interconnect is still going strong, despite rapid growth in the NAS and iSCSI markets.

In fact, the Fibre Channel SAN market racked up record sequential revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 – more than 15% quarter-over-quarter, according to the Dell’Oro Group market research firm. And the leading players in the Fibre Channel switch and HBA markets – Brocade, Cisco, Emulex and QLogic – turned in strong sequential performance numbers. Q4 2009 results were strong enough to put Fibre Channel revenues close to par with the record results recorded in late 2008.

Dell’Oro vice president Seamus Crehan attributes the strong performance to “improving economic conditions, overzealous budget cuts during the first half of 2009, government stimulus, alleviated supply constraints . . . and the server upgrade cycle that started in the second quarter of 2009.”

However, the future success of Fibre Channel as a SAN interconnect rests largely on the success of the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol.

InfoStor readers are by now very familiar with the potential benefits of FCoE and converged (LAN + SAN) networks (see Related Articles links at the end of this post). But a recent report from Gartner suggests that the concept has been over-hyped and that, in fact, many of the key arguments in favor of converged networks are flawed.

Here’s the Gartner press release, which includes a link to the full report (10 pages, $195):

Gartner Says Don't Assume That a Single Converged Data Center Network Is More Efficient Than Two Well-Designed Separate Networks

Converge All Data Center Traffic to a Single Technology, Not a Single Network

STAMFORD, Conn., March 16, 2010 — The notion that a single converged data center network makes for fewer switches and ports, resulting in a simpler network consuming less power and cooling, is flawed, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner research shows that a converged data center network requires more switches and ports, is more complex to manage and consumes more power and cooling than two well-designed separate networks.

"The industry is abuzz with the promise of a single converged network infrastructure, this time in the data center core," said Joe Skorupa, research vice president at Gartner. "Alternatively described as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Data Center Ethernet (DCE), or more precisely, Data Center Bridging (DCB), this latest set of developments hopes to succeed where InfiniBand failed in its bid to unify computing, networking and storage networks."

"The promise that a single converged data center network would require fewer switches and ports doesn't stand up to scrutiny," Mr. Skorupa said. "This is because as networks grow beyond the capacity of a single switch, ports must be dedicated to interconnecting switches. In large mesh networks, entire switches do nothing but connect switches to one another. As a result, a single converged network actually uses more ports than a separate local area network (LAN) and storage area network (SAN). Additionally, since more equipment is required, maintenance and support costs are unlikely to be reduced."

In addition to the financial barriers to the success of a single converged data center network, Gartner also believes that there are significant design and management issues to be addressed. When two networks are overlaid on a single infrastructure, complexity increases significantly. As traffic shares ports, line cards and inter-switch links, avoiding congestion (hot spots) becomes extremely difficult. Mr. Skorupa said that over time, emerging standards, such as Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) may make it easier to avoid these hot spots, but mature, standards-compliant implementations are at least two to three years away.

Debugging problems in the converged network are also more difficult since interactions between the LAN and SAN traffic can make root cause analysis more difficult. Since many problems are transient in nature, events must be correlated across the two virtual networks, increasing complexity. Should an outage be required for solving a problem or simply for performing maintenance, a downtime window that is acceptable for both environments may be required. This increases complexity and may increase cost, as well.

"It's clear that the barriers to a single network range from a dearth of available products and the price premium charged for those products to the requirement to "forklift upgrade" your entire network to long-standing organizational conflicts," said Mr. Skorupa. "However, while the promise that a unified fabric will require fewer switches and ports, resulting in a simpler network that consumes less power and cooling, may go unfulfilled, that doesn't mean that enterprises should forgo the benefits of a unified network technology."

Mr. Skorupa said that there is clear benefit in standardizing on a single technology for all data center networking if that technology adequately supports the needs of applications. This will simplify acquisition, training and sparing. However, settling on a single technology does not require that the networks be combined. Design, operations and troubleshooting is much easier with two separate networks, and it may also cost less to build two separate networks.

Additional information is available in the report "Myth: A Single FCoE Data Center Network = Fewer Ports, Less Complexity and Lower Costs."

Related articles from InfoStor:

Guidelines for FCoE deployment

The shift to FCoE is underway

Is FCoE the future of data center networks?

For a cogent rebuttal to Gartner's arguments, see "Gartner on FCoE: Whoa There, Sparky"

FCoE CNAs: HP/IBM tap Emulex, Cisco taps QLogic

March 2, 2010 – For quite some time, archrival QLogic has had bragging rights in the market for converged network adapters (CNAs) that support FCoE, iSCSI and 10GbE, but Emulex is now able to ante up with recently announced OEM design wins from HP and IBM. But QLogic still has the edge in the number of design wins.

On Friday, Emulex announced that its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) with support for 10GbE and FCoE have been certified by HP for use in select ProLiant rack, tower and blade servers. Support for iSCSI is expected in the second half of the year.

It’s important to note that HP will brand the Emulex adapters. In typical HP fashion, the three adapters will be succinctly dubbed the HP NC550SFP Dual Port 10Gb/s Server Adapter; the HP StorageWorks CN1000E Dual Port CNA (for ProLiant rack and tower servers); and the HP NC550 Dual Port Flex-10 10Gb/s Ethernet Adapter (for ProLiant blade servers).

Emulex’s OneConnect CNAs have full hardware offload for TCP/IP, FCoE and iSCSI, and users can start with a 10GbE NIC and add support for FCoE and/or iSCSI when/if they need it.

Today, Emulex announced a significant expansion of its OEM agreement with IBM. Big Blue will offer Emulex’s 10GbE NICs (upgradable to support FCoE and iSCSI) across eight IBM server lines, including the recently announced eX5 line and three BladeCenter families. Emulex already had an OEM design win with IBM for its Virtual Fabric Adapters. (QLogic's 8100 series CNAs are also supported on IBM's System x and BladeCenter platforms, for both 10GbE and FCoE connectivity.)

Also today, however, QLogic announced that Cisco has certified its 8100 series FCoE CNAs with the Unified Computing System (UCS) platform. Cisco has also certified QLogic’s CNAs for use with the Nexus 5000 series of switches.

If I were QLogic, from a marketing perspective I would continue to crow about my lead in OEM design wins. (In addition to Cisco, QLogic has FCoE CNA design wins with EMC, IBM and NetApp, as well as a number of second tier storage vendors.) But from a competitive perspective, it really doesn’t matter at this stage of the game.

It’s safe to assume that virtually all of the leading vendors will eventually qualify CNAs from both Emulex and QLogic. It’s also likely that OEMs will qualify CNAs from other vendors, such as Broadcom and Intel.

The good thing here is that users will have a wide variety of CNAs to choose from – unlike in the Fibre Channel HBA market, where it boils down to the Emulex-QLogic duopoly followed in a distant third place by Brocade.

Users will be able to choose based on price, performance, and support/performance for whatever protocols they’re using – 10GbE, FCoE and/or iSCSI.

Meanwhile, Emulex and QLogic may be headed for a court date. See "QLogic sues Emulex, but not over technology."

Virtual server SANs: FC vs. iSCSI vs. NAS

February 8, 2010 – In the beginning, most virtual server environments relied on either Fibre Channel SANs or direct-attached storage (DAS). As the virtual environments grew, end users quickly found out that DAS wasn’t going to cut it. Fibre Channel remained king for awhile (and still is), but iSCSI – and NAS – appear to be coming on strong.

In mid-2009, we polled infostor.com visitors regarding what type of storage network protocol they were using in their virtual server environments:

The question: “If you have virtual servers, what is your primary storage configuration? (check one)”

The results: 53% cited Fibre Channel SAN; 28% iSCSI SAN; 10% NAS; and 9% DAS.

A recent report from Forrester Consulting, based on a survey commissioned by Dell (no doubt the EqualLogic crew), suggests that iSCSI – as well as NAS -- is narrowing the gap with Fibre Channel. Forrester surveyed 200 IT storage decision-makers.

The question: “What storage network protocol(s) are you using (or plan to use) for your virtual server environment? (select all that apply)”

The results: 59% Fibre Channel, 57% iSCSI, and 52% NFS [NAS]. Almost a dead heat. (3% of the respondents are using non-networked storage; e.g., DAS.)

In addition to the impressive showing of both iSCSI and NAS, a key conclusion here is that end users are obviously using a mix of storage protocols in their virtual server environments.

There was, however, one seeming inexplicable anomaly in the results to that Forrester survey question: 33% cited FCoE. I’m at a loss to explain that, but here’s the explanation from the report’s authors:

“FCoE interest appears very high. There may well be some confusion regarding the adoption of FCoE, as anecdotal evidence suggests that the 34% current usage number [referring to another question] is very high for this emerging protocol. Products are just now coming onto the market and are usable only for the server side of storage networking, aggregating traffic in top-of-rack and edge switches. The reality here is likely that respondents have interest in or plans to move forward with FCoE, but have not yet implemented FCoE in such high numbers.

Confusion with FCIP, used to carry FC traffic over the WAN for distance replication, may also be increasing the adoption rates reported in this survey.

Another area of confusion relates to the adoption of 10GbE. Respondents who stated that they currently have FCoE in place in the quantitative survey revealed in interviews that they actually have 10GbE for file data traffic but are not using FCoE equipment. Suffice it to say that interest in FCoE is high at this point, but confusion about what really constitutes FCoE is clouding the adoption picture.”

Back to Fibre Channel, iSCSI and NAS: Not surprisingly, use of these protocols in virtual server environments varies by the size of the organization. For example, 70% of large enterprises (1,000 or more employees) cited Fibre Channel, compared to 50% of the SMBs.

66% of the SMBs cited iSCSI, compared to 47% of the large enterprises. And 49% of the SMBs cited NFS, compared to 57% of large enterprises.

The full report is posted on Dell’s site: “Benefits Of SAN/LAN Convergence: Evaluating Interest In And Readiness For Unified Fabric,” is posted on Dell’s site.

If you’re struggling with the storage challenges associated with rapidly growing virtual server environments, consider attending our Webcast, “Managing VM Sprawl and Reducing Costs with Disk Archiving,” tomorrow (Tuesday), February 9 at 10:00 PST, 1:00 EST.

You can get a description of the Webcast and register HERE.

Add Blade to the FCoE lineup

February 4, 2010 – When discussions about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) turn to specific vendors and products, they typically include Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, Intel, QLogic and their various OEMs and resellers, and maybe smaller vendors such as Chelsio and Neterion. And most of InfoStor’s FCoE coverage has focused on those vendors. (See my previous blog post, “FCoE CNAs: The battle lines are being drawn.” )

We’ve been remiss. Blade Network Technologies also supports FCoE in its Ethernet switches.

I discovered that only recently, and since I didn’t know much about the company I attended their Webcast today, which focused on the company’s success and the introduction of its Unified FabricArchitecture (UFA).

Blade claims to have installed more than 7.5 million ports (300,000+ switches), is #3 in the 10GbE switch market (behind Cisco and HP), and has more than a 50% share in the blade switch market (making it #1 in that space).

In addition to FCoE, Blade’s 10GbE switches fully support Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), the “lossless” version of Ethernet.

On the storage front, Blade partners with vendors such as Infortrend, which integrates Blade’s RackSwitch G8124 10GbE switch with its EonStor G6 disk arrays.

On the FCoE/10GbE front, Blade partners with both Emulex and QLogic. For example, Blade’s BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch can be combined with Emulex’s 10GbE/FCoE/iSCSI Virtual Fabric Adapter (CFFh) for IBM’s BladeCenter to provide an end-to-end converged networking solution for the BladeCenter H chassis. Blade also provides a component of a single-chassis FCoE solution for IBM's BladeCenter H equipped with Blade’s BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch and QLogic’s Virtual Fabric Extension Module and Converged Network Adapters (CNAs).

Support for FCoE for Blade's top-of-rack switches is due this quarter.

For more information on FCoE, see the following articles from infostor.com:

Guidelines for FCoE deployment

The shift to FCoE is underway

The great convergence: FCoE and Enhanced Ethernet

FCIA makes the case for FCoE

FCoE CNAs: The battle lines are being drawn

February 1, 2010 – Although the war may drag out over the next four or more years, the battle for the adapter part of the converged network market is starting to take shape. As InfoStor readers know, it has to do with converged network adapters (CNAs) that support Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), 10GbE Data Center Ethernet (DCE), and iSCSI.

QLogic had a time-to-market advantage with its CNAs, and has racked up an impressive roster of OEM design wins with vendors such as EMC, IBM, NetApp and others. In addition, Cisco has certified QLogic’s CNAs (as well as CNAs from Emulex).

So far, Emulex has only announced an OEM design win with IBM, but Emulex allegedly has a number of other major OEM design wins and official announcements are imminent. Emulex is taking an interesting approach: its CNAs are initially 10GbE NICs, but users will be able to upgrade to iSCSI or FCoE via license keys and additional fees. (Emulex’s CNAs are in part the result of a technology partnership with ServerEngines.)

But wait, there’s more.

Let’s not rule out the relative newcomer to the adapter fray – Brocade. Its CNAs have been qualified by IBM, and by NetApp for use on the host side. (Brocade’s FCoE switches have been qualified by EMC, IBM and NetApp.)

And then there’s Intel and Broadcom, the kingpins in the Ethernet NIC market. I’m not up to speed on Intel’s CNA technology/strategy, but Broadcom officially announced its 10GbE CNAs in December. (Broadcom refers to this type of adapter as a Convergence Network Interface Card, or C-NIC.) The NetXtreme II BCM57711 adapters support iSCSI, but FCoE functionality is currently available only for OEM evaluation purposes.

And in addition to Ethernet NIC heavyweights Broadcom and Intel, let’s not discount smaller 10GbE specialists such as Chelsio and Neterion.

It’s probably too early to handicap this race, but for an interesting opinion on Broadcom’s entry, and the CNA space in general, see Frank Berry’s blog – “Broadcom Enters Converged Network Adapter War.”

For an iSCSI-vs.-FCoE discussion, see Kevin Komiega’s blog – “Unified fabrics: 10GbE vs. FCoE.”

And if you’re really interested in FCoE, dial in to the wikibon.org Peer Incite panel discussion ( “FCoE: Fact vs. Fiction” ) this Tuesday, February 2 at 9:00 PST (noon EST). The dial-in number for the audio-only event is (402) 237-2409 and the bridge number is 4168#.

The panel will focus on:

-The realities of FCoE adoption
-What is required to implement FCoE and converged networks
-The limitations and pitfalls practitioners should understand
-How fast FCoE adoption will occur
-What the prominent use case for FCoE will be

Emulex, QLogic jockey for position

November 16, 2009 – The Dell’Oro Group market research firm recently released its Q3 2009 SAN Report, which includes market share figures for SAN product categories such as Fibre Channel HBAs and converged network adapters (CNAs) based on the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard.

As they always do, Emulex and QLogic almost immediately released press releases claiming market share gains and/or leadership. Nice piece of PR one-upmanship. In each case, the companies just emphasize the slice of those markets that they happen to have good news about.

For example, Emulex reported that it is the leader in FCoE CNAs, according to the Dell’Oro report, with revenue growth of 160% over the previous quarter. The company also highlighted the fact that it gained 4% market share in the 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBA market.

QLogic reported that it’s the leader in the overall (4Gbps and 8Gbps) Fibre Channel HBA market, with a 54.4% share in Q3. The company boosted its lead over Emulex by 1.9%, for a lead margin of 17.9%. In addition, according to the press release:

“On the 8Gb Fibre Channel adapter front, QLogic increased its revenue share by 3.6 percentage points compared to the previous quarter, increasing its revenue share lead to 56.6 percent for Q3. In the category of 8Gb Fibre Channel mezzanine cards, QLogic continued to dominate with 78 percent of revenue share for Q3 compared to the nearest competitor's 22 percent share. In the broader category of all mezzanine adapters (4Gb and 8Gb), QLogic increased revenue share by 1.6 percentage points to 72.4 percent and held a 44.8 percentage point lead for the quarter.”

On the FCoE CNA front, these two rivals had better ramp revenues, shipments and market share, because in the first half of next year NIC giants Broadcom and Intel will put both feet in the FCoE market and this will no longer be a Storage Vendors Only skirmish.

An Industry Brief released by IT Brand Pulse notes that CNA port volume shipments increased 133% in Q3, to a total of 9,800 ports, and revenue increased 148% to about $4 million.

In a blog post on FCoE CNAs, IT Brand Pulse CEO and senior analyst Frank Berry says that, “We could see a quantum increase in CNA volume very quickly if Broadcom and Intel position their 10Gb CNAs to displace some or all of the 10Gb NICs they have been shipping for years and that are now ramping at over 50% per quarter.”

For more of Frank’s opinions on the CNA market, see “Radar Picks Up CNA Growth In Q3.”

Will network and storage teams merge?

September 21, 2009 – Server virtualization brings up an old question: Within IT, should the network and storage groups combine? The question is valid because virtualization has created an unprecedented inter-dependency within IT teams – and not only between storage and networking, but also the server and applications teams.

The question isn’t new. It first arose when NAS hit the scene, and came up again when iSCSI gained momentum. But for the most part, NAS and iSCSI are still the domain of the storage professionals.

The question is moot at most SMBs, because the same person or small team is responsible for virtually all IT disciplines. But at larger enterprises, merging IT groups is a stickier issue.

I don’t think virtualization alone will lead to a merger of network and storage groups, and a recent survey of Fortune 1000 firms conducted by TheInfoPro (TIP) seems to, partially, support that opinion.

According to the TIP survey, although more than half (54%) of the respondents said that server virtualization has had a ‘significant’ or ‘major’ impact on addressing storage needs, 78% of the respondents said they do not expect storage and networking teams to combine.

In addition, most (77%) of the respondents said they do not have a separate virtualization group, and 60% said their organization sees major operational benefit in having a separate data management (storage) group.

Still, that seems to leave a lot of IT pros on the fence regarding the merger of network and storage groups.

But if NAS, iSCSI and virtualization don’t drive the various IT groups together, one emerging technology could be the tipping point: Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and so-called 'converged networks.'

FCoE, together with the other storage/networking technologies, could cause interesting internal IT battles. And if it doesn’t lead to an actual merger of IT teams, it will most certainly lead to the need for an unprecedented level of cooperation between them.

For another take on TheInfoPro’s study, see Kevin Komiega’s blog post, “Come together? Not now . . .in IT”

FCoE: The battle lines are being drawn

June 1, 2009 – From an end-user perspective, the battle for the brains (switches and adapters) of next-generation converged networks probably won’t heat up until at least next year. But from the vendor side of the fight, the battle lines are being drawn today.

In a storage-myopic view (which I’m usually guilty of), this could appear to be a battle between storage stalwarts such as Emulex, QLogic, Brocade and Cisco. Obviously, these vendors have an advantage on the Fibre Channel side of the equation. But if Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) prevails, the converged network of the future will be just as much, or more, of an Ethernet play.

In addition to younger companies that specialize in 10Gbps Ethernet (10GbE) adapters and are fervently working on FCoE – such as Chelsio and Neterion – keep your eye on the leaders in the Ethernet (including 10GbE) adapter market – Intel and Broadcom.

Which brings me to the latest turn of the screw in the Broadcom-Emulex acquisition saga.

I’ve blogged previously about this hostile takeover bid. See

Broadcom makes hostile bid for Emulex
Emulex to Broadcom: “Take a hike”

Most recently, Broadcom took its offer beyond the Emulex board, straight to the shareholders. In response, Emulex sent a letter to its stockholders urging them not to tender their shares, and not to consent to Broadcom’s related solicitation, which aims to ultimately remove Emulex’s entire board of directors and appoint in its place nominees hand-picked by Broadcom.

Until this acquisition clears up, or a white knight rides in, it may be too early to handicap the players in the FCoE space. But who do you think will prevail? If you don’t want to respond below, shoot me an email at daves@pennwell.com.

FCoE FUD

April 8, 2009 – At the only press conference at this week’s Storage Networking World confab, Brocade tossed its hat into the FCoE ring with the announcement of a switch and converged network adapters (CNAs). See “Brocade launches FCoE switch, adapters.”

That announcement seemingly officially kicked off the FCoE battles between Cisco and Brocade on the switch front, and Emulex, QLogic and Brocade on the CNA front. (As storage bigots, we’re ignoring the traditional NIC and switch vendors which may, or may not, eventually be contenders in the FCoE ring.)

Brocade’s CNA announcement came on the heels of similar announcements from Emulex and QLogic:

“QLogic delivers single-chip CNAs”
“Emulex CNAs support 10GbE, iSCSI, FCoE”

Upon each announcement, competitors offered their services in bad-mouthing their rivals. Since most of the claims and counterclaims are at this point are impossible to verify, we chose a Joe Friday approach to reporting the announcements – “Just the facts, ma’am.”

The FCoE battles may have begun in the OEM qualification arena (raising the question of how many CNAs or switches the big server/storage vendors will qualify/resell), but the real battles won’t begin until end-user adoption of FCoE begins. At yesterday’s press conference, Brocade CTO Dave Stevens predicted that we won’t see end-user adoption of FCoE in any volume until late 2010 (about the same time that 16Gbps Fibre Channel products are supposed to appear). And that might be optimistic.

When will we see FCoE?

Continuing on my Fibre Channel over Ethernet musings . . .

I don't think we'll see any appreciable adoption of FCoE in the end-user community until at least 2010. Products, or at least prototypes, exist today from vendors such as Emulex, QLogic, and Cisco, and each of those vendors has promised to provide me with FCoE customer contacts within the next month or two. If that happens, InfoStor will certainly report on it, but don't hold your breath.

TheInfoPro research firm recently concluded a survey of Fortune 1000 storage managers that included some questions about FCoE adoption. Almost three-fourths (73%) of the respondents did not have FCoE in their plans (vs. 84% six months ago), 21% had it in their long-term plans, and 2% in their near-term plans. About 1% said they had FCoE products in pilot and/or evaluation stages, and another 4% said they were currently using FCoE (although I find that hard to believe).

One thing that might stall adoption is somewhat political, or territorial, in nature: Who would be in charge of the FCoE infrastructure -- the storage or network professionals? FCoE is Fibre Channel, but it's also Ethernet.

On a somewhat related note: Which vendors will succeed in the FCoE market? Those of us in the storage biz might assume it will be the vendors with a lot of Fibre Channel expertise, such as Brocade, Emulex, QLogic, etc. in the area of FCoE-based converged network adapters (CNAs). However, I'm told that there are dozens of other vendors -- including existing NIC vendors and start-ups -- gearing up to enter the CNA space. The same question would apply to FCoE-enabled switches.

This could be an interesting battle brewing.

For more information on FCoE, see:

Q&A: Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

And for the Fibre Channel Industry Association's view, see:

FCIA makes the case for FCoE

FCoE vs. iSCSI, take 1

The emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard promises to bring back the good old days of the raging Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI debates. Or does it?

First, a little history. When the FCoE concept was first hatched about two years ago, naysayers -- and sometimes the press -- jumped all over it: FCoE was a "last ditch ploy" by Fibre Channel "bigots" to stem the "inevitable tide of Ethernet" taking over all types of data center traffic, including storage via the iSCSI protocol. The rhetoric ran rampant, but then it died down into more politically correct statements such as "Fibre Channel and iSCSI are complementary, not competitive."

I actually bought that for awhile, in part because I (and many others) didn't think that iSCSI would ever be considered for enterprise data centers (which is where FCoE would play). As such, iSCSI would eventually dominate at the departmental level and at SMBs while Fibre Channel, or FCoE, would dominate in data centers as companies moved to converged networks, or whatever you want to call them.

Then along came 10GbE (10Gbps Ethernet) which, once it gets cheaper, all of a sudden makes iSCSI seem feasible as the kingpin storage protocol for data centers. Then again, I don't see data-center managers (or at least the storage managers) giving up on all the Fibre Channel equipment, software, and expertise they've accumulated.

It does seem clear that data-center managers will eventually have to make a choice between FCoE and iSCSI, assuming they're moving to converged networks. Hence the controversy and all the early promotional activity from the FCoE camp.

Another possibility is that FCoE will be used as an interim "stepping stone" technology on the path to a true converged network with one physical layer transport for all traffic.

Yet another possibility: The real competitor for FCoE is not iSCSI but, rather, the status quo. In this scenario, data centers keep their Fibre Channel SANs for storage and their Ethernet LANs for everything else -- and never the twain shall meet.

Maybe I just have FCoE on the brain because of some of the company I kept at last week's Storage Networking World show -- which included Brocade, Emulex, and QLogic -- but in my next blog I'll look at some of the lingering questions/issues surrounding this nascent technology.

The hottest technologies at SNW

In my last blog I promised to reveal The Hottest Technology at last week's Storage Networking World (SNW) show but first, the runners up.

5. Solid-state disk (SSD) drives. There was a lot of talk about SSDs at SNW (mostly in the context of the raging SSD-vs.-HDD debate), but there weren't many product introductions at the show, although Intel did announce production shipments of its new line of enterprise-class flash drives, which will eventually spur further price erosion in this yet-to-get-hot market.

4. Cloud-based storage. Again, a lot of talk, but few vendors. The only cloud storage vendor I met with was Nirvanix, although this services category is expected to grow rapidly over the next couple quarters. For more on this subject, see "What is cloud-based storage?"

3. Storage efficiency technologies, most notably data de-duplication and thin provisioning. Data de-duplication for secondary storage is becoming widespread, but there was a lot of talk at the show about data de-dupe for primary storage from vendors such as NetApp, Storwize, Ocarina Networks, and there will be much more to come.

2. Server virtualization. This is clearly the dominant IT trend, but there are so many storage technologies focused on optimizing virtual servers that it didn't quite make the top of my list.

And the winner is . . .

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). This is admittedly an odd choice because, in terms of end-user adoption, FCoE may be years away, but

For one, FCoE was the topic of the only major press conference at the show (hosted by QLogic, Cisco, NetApp and VMware).

Two, a number of vendors made FCoE product -- or at least product certification -- announcements at the show (albeit prototypes in most cases), including EMC, NetApp, Brocade, Emulex and QLogic.

And three, FCoE will provide controversy (as in 10Gbps iSCSI over Ethernet vs. Fibre Channel over Ethernet) for years to come.

I'll address the controversial side of FCoE in my next blog.