INDUSTRY

Broad Availability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet by Storage OEMs Drive Greater End-User Adoption of IP SANs: Neterion, Inc., the industry leader in the 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter market for server and storage environments, today announced the broad availability of Xframe by tier 1 storage OEMs. Vendors have launched the 10 Gigabit Ethernet option for their product lines over the last 6 months, and shipments have been ramping up since then, demonstrating high end-user interest in this technology. Storage platforms that have adopted the Xframe 10 GbE option are multiplying, as shown by recent industry announcements, reinforcing the value-proposition of IP storage. 10 Gigabit Ethernet SANs can be used as a replacement or a complement to Fibre Channel installations. Storage products equipped with Xframe provide integrated NAS and iSCSI functionalities to deliver high performance, availability and scalability – as well as advanced management functionality and virtual file-system technology. Neterion’s Xframe completed rigorous storage OEMs qualification testing that included hundreds of hours of technical tests designed for the most demanding business-critical applications. Other leading factors considered by OEMs to select Neterion were Xframe’s superior product features and performance, best-in-class quality and operational excellence, high-volume manufacturing capabilities and a solid financial position. “Where we most need 10 GbE with iSCSI is on both ends of the connection between the switches and the storage array,” stated Robert Passmore, VP of Research at Gartner. “This application will reduce the number of iSCSI ports on both switches and arrays by a factor of 10, easily justifying the higher cost of 10 GbE connections. A bonus is that data copy and or migration operations between two similarly connected arrays could occur as much as 10 times faster.” Neterion Fuels Storage OEM Shipments… By deploying IP SANs at 10 GbE speeds, storage clients can build a flexible, scalable storage platform and move data at high speeds to locations throughout the world – in effect, creating a global SAN. “ESG has been tracking Neterion’s progress in 10 Gigabit Ethernet storage solutions for some time now”, said Brian Garrett, analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Smart storage vendors who recognize the inevitable march towards 10 Gigabit Ethernet for use in NAS and iSCSI storage arrays are turning to Neterion for state-of-the-art 10 Gigabit storage connectivity and acceleration. The extreme bandwidth needed by high definition video editors is an excellent example of the type of early adopters who are clamoring for Neterion enabled NAS over 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Over time, ESG expects the broad market to follow these early adopters as iSCSI and NAS over 10 Gigabit Ethernet becomes THE way we do networked storage in the data center.” “10 Gigabit Ethernet will be an important addition to enterprise storage networks, not just for its speed, but because of the familiarity of Ethernet solutions to IT departments. Price per port on 10 Gigabit Ethernet has also been steadily dropping as deployments continue,” notes Steven J. Schuchart Jr. Senior Analyst for Enterprise Networks, Current Analysis, Sterling, Virginia. “10 Gigabit Ethernet's speed and familiarity resonate strongly with enterprises and I expect that 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology will come to dominate storage networking in all forms.” Data center management will also benefit from Neterion’s industry-leading Hyperframe™ I/O virtualization (IOV) architecture that expands hardware virtualization support to input/output devices; this will allow IT managers to deploy key multi-channel and multi-path features, increasing flexibility, reliability and performance of storage solutions. “With general availability today and volume shipping capabilities from tier 1 storage vendors, corporate IT decision makers can take full advantage of 10 Gigabit Ethernet as they implement IP SAN and NAS infrastructures in their data centers,” says Dave Zabrowski, President and CEO of Neterion. “Now end users adopting 10 Gigabit Ethernet for storage applications will have a simpler, more cost-effective and flexible means to consolidate and virtualize their data.” Neterion Fuels Storage OEM Shipments… 10 GbE storage platforms support simplified, web-based management systems along with other storage and data management tools. In addition, customers now have a broad choice of 10 GbE IP SAN options, based on their price/performance and configuration requirements.