Betting on top storage speed

Some areas of the storage market are crowded with too many similar products. Think, for example, of clustered IP SANs -- it's something of a niche segment, but it's vibrant with competing solutions from vendors like EqualLogic, Intransa, and LeftHand Networks.

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We weren't able to include an evaluation of Intransa gear in the recent IP storage report, but I knew that something was brewing because they had been unusually quiet lately.

Intransa was part of my early reviews of IP storage back in 2003, and that initial version of the IP5000 from Intransa earned top scores.

However, one of the dilemmas faced by companies with good products but too many close rivals is differentiating themselves from the competition and perhaps addressing customer demands that others are overlooking.

With a new management team composed of storage industry veterans and a fresh injection of VC funds, Intransa is charging that dilemma head-on. This week, it's trumpeting StorStac, a new clustered architecture that has specialized nodes to selectively add more capacity or more performance. Predictably, Intransa calls those devices PCUs (performance controller units) and SCEs (storage capacity enclosures).

"We are in a slightly different market than EqualLogic or LeftHand Networks," explains Jeff Whitney, vice president of marketing for Intransa and one of the new managers. "Our customers may want to add extra performance without adding extra capacity, or they can add extra capacity without adding extra performance," he says.

As part of an effort to differentiate itself from the competition, Intransa is also extending its target audience. Previously, it mainly focused on entry-level and mid-tier customers; now, it's looking to include more performance-intensive, network-based applications, such as video-on-demand, IP television, video surveillance, and remote medical imaging.

With those and other bandwidth-intensive environments in mind, it's only natural to think that 10 GbE will be part of the new StorStac architecture. After all, that's today's realistic fast transfer rate for IP transport.

In fact, a 10 GbE-capable PCU is currently in beta, and according to Intransa, it will deliver a throughput of 750MBps. As you can have up to four PCUs per cluster, the total transfer rate of such a system should be a remarkable 3,000 MBps.

Intransa hasn't set an availability date for the controller with 10 GbE, but a 2GbE-capable unit that aggregates 2GbE ports should become available by the end of March. Expect that PCU to have a transfer rate of up to 220 MBps and a similar option to stack up to four controller in a single cluster.