Sun's latest Fibre Channel system set

Electronic News, Oct 27, 1997 by Cynthia Bounellis

Menlo Park, Calif.--Sun Microsystems today will introduce its second-generation Fibre Channel storage subsystem, the Array A5000.

Sun said it will leverage technologies from Encore Computer, a company currently being acquired by Sun, to differentiate its products. With Fibre Channel becoming a platform for networked storage, Sun believes the competitive landscape in this area will change over time. "There will be innovation in the areas of intelligent controllers and interconnect products such as hub and switches," said Robin Harris, senior product manager at Sun. "Without intelligence, your servers do all the storage management." He said intelligent controllers will be used to run RAID and backup functions, as well as remote data-copy and data-sharing among heterogenous systems.

The Array A5000, which will eventually replace Sun's Sparc Storage Array product, features up to 500 gigabytes per rack, up to four hot-swappable Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop channels, 149.1GB drives and an electro-luminescent touch-screen display. The display contains dozens of nested menus that let network managers check system configurations or rev levels, for example. Pricing starts at $30,000.

Markets for the new drive include online transaction processing and enterprise resource planning. The new system supports Solaris operating systems environments and will eventually support features for Windows NT.

The new system is designed for growth. It can be configured, for instance, for high bandwidth. "FCAL storage is a platform, it's not like buying a box that will be obsolete in two years," said Mr. Harris.

Sun's announcement comes at a time when there is much talk about Fibre Channel, but not many products. However, 1998 is expected to be the year when Fibre Channel will become a product in its own right, as customers are demanding more storage capabilities and products that can support multi-platform environments. New entrants include Ridge Technologies, a startup focusing on mid-range storage subsystems, Storage Technology Corp. and StorageTek (EN, October 20).

Analysts have predicted that Compaq Computer, who has boasted about its Fibre Channel plans for some time, will become a formidable player. According to Dataquest, 90 percent of Compaq's storage revenues currently come from inside the server. Meanwhile, Compaq earlier this year strengthened its Fibre Channel position by partnering with Hewlett-Packard to use HP's Tachyon controller with its Fibre Channel host-bus adapter design. And, since 3Q97, Compaq has had its Fibre Channel subsystem in the hands of 400 customers, who tested Beta versions.

Within the next two weeks, Compaq will make a strong statement about the direction of its storage business, announcing its short-term and long-terms Fibre Channel plans. At the moment, observers have awaited a product from Compaq. Because of testing and software drives issues on the host adapter, the company delayed shipment of its Fibre Channel box, which was due out this month, to 1Q98.

According to Jeffrey Schnabel, manager of enterprise storage solutions at Compaq, Compaq uses a testing procedure it calls "wide area test," in addition to the hardware compatibility test (HCT) required by Microsoft. "A lot of the industry feels that if you pass an operating system level certification, you can sell your product," he said, referring to the HCT test. "But we've found that that type of testing is not that rigorous as our wide area test." Compaq tests product bugs on four levels, with the first level indicating catastrophe. A level two test would keep a product from shipping.

Another factor that might have delayed the product was in Compaq's design. "They are trying to do Ultra SCSI at the back end and Fibre Channel at the front end, and that's complicated" said Thomas Lahive, senior storage analyst for Dataquest. This means that customers can keep their SCSI drives and hang them off the back end of a Fibre Channel network. Mr. Schnabel said this portion of the system works and has passed testing.

Testing to make sure the system could handle a certain number of failovers also contributed to delays. Said Mr. Schnabel, "Over time, the firmware bugs out and can't handle one more failover." Mr. Schnabel said this type of test is similar to memory leakage, and was fixed 12 weeks ago. Mr. Schnabel doesn't feel the product delay will impact its market.