The trial transferred a 125-Gbyte Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) database from a Sprint lab located in Overland Park, Kan. Optical crossconnect devices at Sprint's Burlingame, Calif., lab created a continuous loop back to the Overland Park lab, simulating a point-to-point FCIP connection spanning 3,600 miles.
According to Harman, the Oracle file was transferred one way (1,800 miles) in 3 hours, 8 minutes.
An alternative way of encapsulating storage over IP -- iSCSI -- has been tested by others over even longer distances (see iSCSI Travels 7,500 Miles). Sprint checked out iSCSI itself but decided it was too early in the adoption cycle for this technology. Right now storage arrays do not support iSCSI and the standard has only just been ratified, says Harman (see iSCSI Gets Go-Ahead).
The equipment used to create the demo -- private Sprint circuits, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) MDS 9000 SAN switches and MDS 9000 IP Storage Services modules, and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series systems running Hitachi TrueCopy data replication software -- enabled link utilization of 100 percent. Most data transfers dont fill the pipe completely, so it takes longer to send the data, Harman notes.
Cisco and HDS got first dibs on the deal as both are already strategic partners of Sprint. Harman says Sprint is currently inviting all the major storage switch and array vendors to join the demo (see Sprint Puts Cisco to Test).
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