News

posted on 17 April 2008 09:56

A 10Gbit Ethernet Storage Alliance has been formed - with just one storage vendor member, Nimbus Data Systems.

The alliance has four 10GIgE switch vendors and three adapter vendors in it, so it is better viewed as a switch and adapter alliance that happens to have a storage vendor member as well.

Nimbus is one of the few storage array vendors to have a product supporting 10GigE and so the alliance can be used by it to dispel customer doubts about the availability of a 10GigE switch and adapter infrastructure.

The stated aim of the alliance is to 'increase awareness and enterprise deployments of 10 Gigabit Ethernet as the superior storage networking infrastructure for server virtualization and enterprise-wide storage consolidation given its proven interoperability, low cost, common management, and high performance.'

It is odd that it is all about storage across 10GigE and yet has just one storage vendor, strengthening a possible view that the alliance is simply a swift piece of opportunistic marketing by Nimbus.

The alliance says 10GigE customers can:-

- Reduce storage network infrastructure cost by 30-75 percent compared to 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel

- Reduce storage costs by 50 percent by combining block and file-level services (SAN and NAS) onto one network

- Simplify IT administration through uniform management across the LAN, WAN, and storage network

- Increase bandwidth by 2.5 times as compared to 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel while minimizing latency

- Capitalize on multi-vendor interoperability of 10GigE switches, adapters, and storage devices

- Support today's iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, and emerging protocols like FCoE, iSER, and iWARP, on one network

- Deploy disaster recovery affordably by extending the storage network to the WAN without FC gateways

- Reduce software licensing costs by leveraging multi-pathing built-in to 10GigE adapters .

Nimbus' CEO and founder, Thomas Isakovich said: "10 Gigabit Ethernet brings versatility and simplicity to enterprises of all sizes through network consolidation, familiar management, more bandwidth without trunking, and multi-vendor interoperability. With 10 Gigabit Ethernet now available for less than half the cost per gigabit of even traditional Gigabit Ethernet, all of the necessary elements are in place for immediate enterprise deployments."

To learn more about joining the Alliance, email info@10gbestoragealliance.org, there being no alliance website.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}