FC storage prices falling: Is it still news?

Don't look now, but FC (Fibre Channel) storage is finally becoming more affordable. 

It was inevitable. I predicted, as did many others, that the combined effect of new technologies such as iSCSI, Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI, would bring networked storage to the masses and indirectly lower FC prices.

Those faceless masses now have a common acronym to identify with: SMB (small to midsize businesses). And according to popular belief, SMBs have an insatiable appetite for smart storage gear reasonably priced. That is, as long as the cumbersome process of setting things up is simplified. FC vendors want to sell to these masses too but clearly must work to simplify things, and they are. Not only are they adjusting the price points but also features and usability.

Emulex, for example, is now offering its partners a new line of PCI-X HBAs, the LP101 that combines 2Gbps bandwidth and performance in excess of 20,000 IOPS (I/O operations per second) with a new simplified management application named “Autopilot.”

The folks at Emulex are so proud of their new Autopilot software (and of the LP101 in general) that they offered to fly me to their lab. I plan to check it out the next time I am in town.

The price of this new jewel has not been revealed yet, as the initial launch will be through OEMs who set their own prices. However, expect to pay half of what you normally would pay for other Emulex-branded HBAs. 

In an unrelated, but concurrent announcement, Emulex disclosed a new InSpeed SOC (switch on a chip), which is essentially an ultra-compact FC switch that improves diagnostics and performance, replacing traditional FC arbitrated loop configurations.

If you missed it last year in the throng of mergers and acquisitions, Emulex purchased Vixel and its InSpeed technology. InSpeed offers two lines of SOC products: a switch for disk drives contained in the same enclosure; and a higher level “root” model, which connects drawers inside the same storage cabinet.

It’s interesting to note that respected vendors such as BlueArc, Fujitsu, HP, NEC, Network Appliance, and Quantum have adopted InSpeed in their respective storage products.

With that in mind, you and I will probably never directly purchase a new SOC 422, but its availability will favor building enclosures that support 4Gbps transfers and up to 22 2.5” disk drives. However, the SOC 422 ports can handle both lower speed and larger drives and come with a 50 percent price reduction over previous models, which means that future products built around them should appeal to the hordes of SMB customers.

If you are looking for an FC array that is already on the market, check out a new appliance from Candera, which intelligently combines ATA drives with FC connectivity. As you may recall, Candera also offers, and was an early implementer of, intelligent switches that relocate most storage management activities to the network.

In fact, the new appliance includes the Candera SCE 510 network storage controller and ATA arrays with capacity ranging from a few to hundreds of TB, and can be set to just about any RAID configuration.

According to Candera, its array can save customers (here we go again) about 50 percent of the purchase price over a similarly configured, competing solution. I’ll let you try to figure out which vendor that might be.

Vendors will probably brag about lower prices for a while, and that topic could become boring news, but it’s still good to hear.