Where have all the SANs gone?
Where have all the SANs gone?
While vendors tell end-users that networked storage will be the panacea to fix all storage woes, the storage-area network (SAN) is still an unproven mythological beast because what passes for SANs today are based on fibre channels, according to an independent storage guru.
Speaking at the opening of the annual storage event Storage World 2002, independent consultant, author and storage guru, Jon William Toigo warmed up the 320 delegates with insights into the industry that spared no one, not even the humble SAN.
Networked storage is being hailed, misleadingly, as the panacea for all that ails your storage environment, according to Mr Toigo, however networked storage does not exist at all today.
"No storage today is networked. We've got big fat SCSI cables. We have network-attached-storage or NAS. You know what NAS is, it is a thin operating system bolted to an array. And we've got SAN. SAN is switched server attached storage it is not truly network storage because SANs are based on fibre channel and fibre channel is not a network protocol," Mr Toigo said.
Mr Toigo gave a brief account of the history of SAN, illustrating how it has strayed from the original vision.
When Compaq acquired Digital, the intellectual property from the company inspired Compaq to publish a white paper on network storage which Mr Toigo described as "visionary". Based on ideas from Digital, Compaq published its Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA) white paper in 1997. The paper set the groundwork for an entirely new storage paradigm—the storage area network (SAN)—and started the buzz around networked storage that is still heard today. The paper provided a definition for a SAN, a discussion of the properties of a SAN, and set the standards by which products would be judged to be true SANs.
However, the definition of SAN as outlined in the original white paper is not what we are seeing in SANs today, according to Mr Toigo.
"If you can still find [ENSA] on the web, download it fast and store it, because ENSA is going through mutation and being re-spun," he said, adding the original paper is "visionary" and you still hear the phrase "the product is really good, but it's no ENSA".
Mr Toigo described the fibre channel SAN we see today as an "oxymoron" and a "kludge".
Ultimately, though, the customer has to take responsibility for driving storage standards higher, Mr Toigo said.
"There's an awful lot of snake oil out there and we're being shown it all the time. Today we're going to talk about the latest line in storage [from] a long line of storage [releases]. With technological ideas are spun out by the marketing departments of companies, something I like to call 'marketecture' rather than architecture," he said
"In the final analysis though, it's you the end–users who determine which of these technologies are going to sit on the shop floor, which of these technologies you want to deliver business values within the organisation. It's up to you to do the due diligence and testing," he said, adding he ultimately holds the consumer, not the vendor, responsible for "the solutions and conundrums which we create for ourselves," he added.
Storage World 2002, a Terrapinn organised conference, runs from Monday November 18 to Wednesday November 20 at Sydney's Convention and Exhibition centre in Darling Harbour. The event is backed by all the big players in the storage sector, including Computer Associates, IBM, Legato, Hewlett-Packard and Veritas.
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