The drive for better, cheaper storage: SAN NAS and other storage networking solutions - storage area networks, network attached storage

Post, June, 2002 by Claudia Kienzle

as video resolutions swell to HDTV and digital film levels, having scalable, high-performance storage is no longer a luxury -- it's a necessity Old work-arounds for moving data -- like a sneakernet of removable drives -- are still employed in some video facilities. However the quest for greater productivity is driving demand in powerful, high-performance storage and networking solutions.

But choosing the most cost-effective solution can be very perplexing since buyers must not only consider competing storage products but competing networking technologies. Should they go with SAN (storage area networks) or NAS (network attached storage)? Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet? Fibre Channel, SCSI or IDE (ATA) drives? And are LANs, TCP/IP, SCSI and file servers still relevant for high-end video applications?

The answer vendors say, is "all of the above." For some applications, the cost and complexity of a Fibre Channel SAN might be justifiable if you need to have media assets immediately available to multiple workstations for realtime, interactive creative collaboration. In other instances, where media assets should be easily accessible, but where realtime interaction is not required, it may be more cost effective to employ NAS devices, servers and Gigabit Ethernet And very often, the answer is to use a combination of SAN and NAS solutions -- with a SAN core where digital content creation needs to be supported, and a NAS for nearline storage and data access enterprise-wide.

The following is a random sampling of this growing section of the industry.

MADE BY MAXTOR

"Ideally, video professionals would love to keep all their media assets online with immediate realtime access via multiple workstations... but that's just not practical," says Jared Vishney, senior manager of industry marketing for Maxtor Corporation (www.maxtor.com) in Milpitas, CA. "Since high-performance Fibre Channel SAN networks are costly to implement, they should only keep 'work in progress' on their SAN. When that project is finished, it's wise to move it off the SAN onto lower cost NAS storage, such as our Max-Attach NAS 4300 or MaxAttach NAS 6000 solutions." The primary distinction between SAN and NAS is that SANs employ Fibre Channel (or SCSI) architecture and drives that allow high-speed, peer-to-peer, realtime interaction with high-volume content. But, NAS employs ATA drives and simply attaches to the network thus avoiding the higher cost of Fibre Channel SAN hardware and equipment. When NAS systems are attached to a network, files can be stored, searched and transferred to and from workstations . Unlike data tape systems, NAS allows contents to be searched in a digital nonlinear fashion rather than shuttling a linear tape.

The MaxAttach NAS 6000 Series, scalable from 1.9TB to 5.7TB, is priced starting at $29,999. The MaxAttach NAS 4300, in a one-unit form factor with 640GB, is priced at $5,499. Both support Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet and Windows, Linux, Mac, UNIX and Novell environments.

"By having disk-based nearline storage our customers can move a job back onto their SAN or workstations faster than they can ingest the content from video or data tape," adds Vishney. "They can also generate additional revenue by charging clients to store their projects on the NAS, or by waiving storage costs to entice return business. For independent artists and editors editing DV format video on low-cost NLE systems like Apple's Final Cut Pro or Adobe's Premiere -- a market for which a SAN has been too costly -- NAS offers an affordable, scalable, centralized repository for cross-platform file sharing," says Vishney.

BLUEARC: HARDWARE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

At BlueArc (www.bluearc.com) moving and managing large data files is handled by BlueArc's hardware architecture rather than software. By shifting the processing burden to hardware, TBs of large-sized files can be easily sent or retrieved in two directions simultaneously, at up to (250MBps) Gigabit Ethernet speeds.

This patent-pending solid-state hardware architecture is the foundation of BlueArc's scalable, high-performance enterprise-class product, the Si7500 Storage System based on BlueArc's SiliconServer architecture. While this product is a NAS system, BlueArc's high-speed, cross-platform file sharing capabilities give the system the characteristics of a SAN without the cost or complexity associated with SAN management Rather than relying on expensive, specialized Fibre Channel technology, BlueArc's approach exploits cost-effective Ethernet networking that most companies have already deployed for enterprise communications.

While technologies like TCP/IP and server-based LANs are often regarded as conducive to bottlenecks, BlueArc's hardware accelerates the processing of data and TCP/IP overhead to overcome the limitations inherent in the traditional LAN, as well as to streamline data back up. BlueArc claims this saves as much as 80 percent on operational costs.

"We've also made the hardware more flexible by employing field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Unlike ASICs, which can only be programmed once, the FPGA is a develop mental-type silicon chip that can easily be reprogrammed remotely via the Internet whenever the capabilities need to be upgraded. So customers are no longer locked into whatever code was originally burned onto the chip," says Tony Primavera, chief architect for San Jose, CA's BlueArc Corporation.