News

posted on 06 March 2008 16:34

---

In a significant enhancement of its File Area Network (FAN) services offering Brocade will add data de-duplication and content indexing services. Its StorageX global file virtualisation and global namespace product will also add Unix support.

Brocade's Timm Hoyt, director of file solutions, EMEA, says that we could expect something to be announced within 45 days, say 21st April, which is the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II - but that is probably not the reason.

The idea seems to be that StorageX provides a global name space service and it works in conjunction with Windows Active Directory and Microsoft's DFS - Distributed File Service. It is global across Windows file stores. This allows file access requests from servers to go through a StorageX abstraction layer which maps them to the actual file volume and physical storage resource. Files can be migrated from one physical store to another without breaking application file mapping links or taking applications offline.

There is no DFS equivalent for Unix. Brocade is going to offer one, which has two results. One: different Unix file storage islands can be consolidated into a single virtual one. Two: the Unix file storage world and the Windows file storage world can be combined in one single global namespace, with 'global' meaning both Windows and Unix.

Also Brocade will add a data de-duplication facility. It seems likely that this will be sourced from outside the company as a question abut it being in-house technology was smilingly deflected. The usual suspects include Data Domain and Diligent and FalconStore. We note that NetApp, which recently agreed to resell Brocade's DCX Data Centre switch, has its own de-duplication technology which runs on Data ONTAP, which, in turn, is based upon Unix. StorageX runs on a Windows server.

There are lots of known unknowns here, to think like Donald Rumsfeld for a minute: will the de-dupe be inline or post-processing? Will it apply to all files? Will it apply to certain tiers of storage only? Will it apply across Unix and Windows file stores? There are probably unknown unknowns too - but I wouldn't know!

Brocade will also add an in-house developed content indexing technology which can look inside a file and, based on keywords, move files to separate file stores if required. This has a relevance to legal discovery functions.

The net effect of these FAN platform enhancements is that the FAN product set becomes a much strengthened offering and gives Brocade an answer to offerings such as F5's ARX file virtualisation switch. It also strengthens Brocade's vision of integrating block and file storage in the data centre.

StorageX has just been taken up by BlueArc and Hitachi Data Systems.