Too Early For 10Gbit IP SANs?
Too Early For 10Gbit IP SANs?
March 23rd, 2006: While the bigger players are revelling in the merits of 4Gbit/s Ethernet, a number of smaller players are looking to make names for themselves rolling out 10Gbit/s iSCSI SANs. But is the market ready?
The two companies, Nimbus Data in the U.S. and Germany’s Xiranet, are both pushing the boundaries launching new high speed appliances ahead of major players such as EMC and Network Appliance. They may be playing in different market spaces, however, they both believe the time is right for 10-Gig.
"We've been getting requests for ten-gig," says Nimbus Data CEO Tom Isakovich. "The time is right. iSCSI used to mean it's cheap but it's slower, but not anymore."
Nimbus is shooting for the midrange with its unified iSCSI SAN and NAS which range from 1.5Tb to 55Tb capacity. Xiranet on the other hand, has set it sights on the lower end with its 10-Gig, 7.5Tb to 100Tb SAS and SATA systems.
Due to its lower cost, iSCSI is mainly used for small SANs with moderate performance requirements. However, this lower cost comes with a performance hit. Once adopted in a broader array of devices, 10-gig iSCSI will close this gap considerably.
“With the higher bandwidth of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and hardware acceleration iSCSI performance will get a boost and more servers can be supported by a single storage system.” says Mirko Benz, CEO of Xiranet Communications. “This presents a very cost effective solution. Thus, for the majority of SAN installations iSCSI will become the solution of choice.”
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