Tech Report: Intelligent switches |
 |
By Mark Lewis, Managing Editor
01 Feb 2005 | SearchStorage.com |
|
|
This month storage analyst Jerome Wendt's "Tech Report" takes look at intelligent switches. According to Charles Clark intelligent switches date back to the 1980s in the field of telephony. These switches made their first appearance in voice networks as a means of automating certain aspects of network management, such as provisioning and call handling, to lower administrative costs.
But now they are back in a different form -- to help manage your large storage environments. According to Jerome, "switches bear the brunt of the changes in storage networks. They must simultaneously monitor and prioritize bandwidth for critical applications, handle storage management functions and secure access for all devices attached to the SAN. Putting these services in switches gives users multiple benefits."
Jerome notes those benefits include:
A central point of administration for storage, performance and security management functions
Simpler storage management
Stronger security
Better performance and availability of critical applications
A host of familiars, Brocade, McData and Cisco are starting to provide more intelligence in the switch. But, some of the real innovation is coming from startups such as Maxxan, Sandial and Maranti.
TECH REPORT
 Webcast: Intelligent Switches: Practical or hype?
Storage magazine extra: Switch smarts
Additional information on Intelligent switches
Webcast:
Growing and merging SANs creates levels of complexity that many of today's baseline Fibre Channel switches were never designed to handle. Deployed to referee connectivity between servers and storage, switches need more intelligence to manage the multifaceted performance, storage and security issues that large fabrics increasingly need to address. With storage management, performance and security functions slowly being migrating to switches, should storage managers consider the intelligent switch route? How should storage managers plan for intelligent switches and what products are available today? Jerome Wendt breaks through the hype and answers these questions.
Click here for the original tech report from Storage magazine. This article also includes a downloadable chart of all the Intelligent switch products and their specs.
For more information about intelligent switches, take a look at these SearchStorage.com resources:
Technical resources:
What is an intelligent switch?
Why and how to virtualize inside a switch
Making sense of new intelligent switch products
Checklist: How to buy a switch
Where should storage intelligence reside?
News:
2004 networking products of the year
New EMC software to run on McData switches
Maranti puts more management functions in the switch fabric
Product roundup: Switches
Storage Clips: SANrad rolls out iSCSI switch
Hot technologies to keep your eye on
MaXXan rolls out next-gen storage switch
MaXXan sees early traction in DR applications
Cisco completes intelligent switch acquisition
Sandial tackles SAN congestion problems
Which products of technologies would you like to see as tech reports? e-mail us and let us know.
|
|
|
|
