"FCIP provides basic connectivity, but it does not address the additional requirements for fault isolation and does not provide as much security or flexibility as iFCP," he says.
To date, however, Nishan is the only vendor that has implemented iFCP -- most other IP-based Fibre Channel equipment in the industry uses FCIP for WAN connectivity, including products from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), CNT (Nasdaq: CMNT), Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU), and SANcastle Technologies Inc. (which recently was acquired by LightSand Communications Corp.). (See LightSand Buys SANcastle, Cisco Touts Storage-Over-IP Project, CNT Flings FC Far & Wide, and Lucent & McData Shake SANs.)
There are technologies that perform gateway functions similar to iFCP to interconnect two SAN fabrics, including the Autonomous Regions with Domain Address Translation (AR/DAT) protocol and Cisco's proprietary Virtual SAN (VSAN) (see Cisco's VSANs: Hype or Innovation?).
Burger notes, though, that about 100 Nishan customers currently use its iFCP-based gateways and that the equipment is qualified with numerous OEM partners, including EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).
Meanwhile, prior to announcing the Nishan deal, McData had developed an FCIP blade for its directors, which it was set to release by the end of 2003 (see McData Packs in the Ports and McData Demos FCIP). Burger says that project has been canceled, and that future FCIP support will be developed by the Nishan team.
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