Size also is key. "We don't do bonecrushing enterprise stuff," says VP of market development Zophar Sante. "What we're saying is that SANs are for everyone else who couldn't afford or understand Fibre Channel."
Other vendors, too, say the place for iSCSI will be the small department, replacing NAS or DAS with IP-based, remotely connected arrays, versus massive, data-center-based Fibre Channel setups. What they don't agree with Sanrad on is the location of virtualization intelligence.
"We do virtualization fully contained in the storage array," says John Joseph, VP of marketing at EqualLogic Inc. His company just started a channel program to address the need for departmental customers, where he sees IP SANs offering longer distances and more cost-effective management compared with Fibre Channel (see EqualLogic Boasts OEM Program).
Another competitor, LeftHand Networks Inc., also put virtualization software directly in its storage drives, which VP of marketing Tom Major says reduces the chance of having one single point of virtualization failure in a network switch. He grants, however, that customers looking to create switch-based iSCSI networks can deploy redundant switches.
One element that may affect how virtualization plays out in future deployments is Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), which is also lining up behind the switch-resident approach.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
