Role of smart switches in virtual storage

Currently, the smart switch technology has become increasingly mature. Here we mainly introduce the performance and features of mainstream smart switches in the market. Virtual Storage Technology is undoubtedly a hot technology in recent years. In addition to traditional host manufacturers, disk array manufacturers, and backup software manufacturers, there is also a new generation of Intelligent switches, which are particularly prominent, in addition, the product has been launched under the standard of 2 GB Fiber Channel Protocol, and has a place in the current storage virtualization products and solutions.

As we all know, in traditional SAN storage networks, Fiber Channel Protocol switches not only occupy the core of the network in the network topology, but also are the core equipment of the SAN storage network in a practical sense, the first is that the Optical Fiber Channel Protocol makes a SAN network, which is the so-called "no skin, no skin, no hair, no thin attachment". Secondly, in the SAN network, the smart switch layer must provide sufficient ports for the front-end host and the back-end disk array to achieve the network topology. This "enough" has two meanings, first, the number of ports required by the Host channel must be sufficient, and second, there is no bandwidth bottleneck in the network (from the host to the disk array. On this basis, the developed smart switch achieves storage virtualization, which is more advantageous than disk array-based storage virtualization. See.

There are many virtualization devices and solutions at the network layer. In particular, cisco mds and maxxan mvx both define their own products as smart switches. There are other products, such as ibm svc, SVM, KASHYA, and MARANTI. Similar Products under development by other well-known enterprises are also following up in great detail, now let's take a look at the market prospects of such products. Every successful product or technology must be accepted by users, which is no exception to smart switch products. Chinese users have the following features:

1. users' decision makers are not technically competent. Therefore, on the one hand, they are superstitious about big brands, on the other hand, they are not easy to accept new products and technologies, and are unwilling to bear the technical risks brought about by the use of new products and technologies.

2. The relationship between manufacturers, integrators and users seriously affects users' attitudes towards different products and technologies.

3. National laws stipulate that public bidding is required for procurement projects with more than 0.5 million RMB. The competition in public bidding is fierce. The intensity of competition is proportional to the total amount of projects and the transparency of bidding, the more open the project, the more competitive the competition is. At the same time, there are still such phenomena in the current sales: storage devices are attached to server hosts, and optical fiber network devices are generally attached to storage devices.

According to these situations, before selling smart switch products, we must first face the huge pressure and blocking from host manufacturers, storage equipment manufacturers, and smart switch manufacturers. For example, although IBM has developed a SVC virtualization solution, IBM must provide key recommendations for its SHARK series storage products, and in any case, IBM will maintain the tone of promoting the SHARK series products, in some limited-investment projects, SVC will be promoted as an alternative to SHARK products and compete with products and solutions of other brands. Of course, other similar products do not have a gold icon like IBM, and they are only more passive in the competition.

Smart switch manufacturers must use strong marketing campaigns and partners closely related to users to persuade users to accept storage virtualization solutions based on smart switches, this solution is defined as a new target for the user's storage system and implemented as a specific technical standard, in order to obtain the admission certificate from the market, but this step should catch up with host manufacturers such as HP and IBM, we also need to avoid EMC2, HDS, and other disk array manufacturers. These manufacturers master important resources such as mainstream products, technologies, and services and are unable to provide intelligent switch manufacturers that can even learn from successful cases, how difficult it is.

At the same time, the competition from similar products is even more severe. Traditional smart switch manufacturers such as BROCADE and MCDATE are bound to disk array manufacturers, which are rock-solid. cisco mds, maxxan mvx &; SA, SVM, ibm svc, MARANTI, fight for each other. Maybe when a user decides to adopt a storage virtualization solution based on smart switches, he will be surrounded by more manufacturers and sales representatives.

After analyzing the background, let's take a look at the specific project operations. According to the current national laws, more than 0.5 million of procurement projects must be open for bidding. In such projects that are lower than the bidding standard, the price of smart switch products is no longer comparable to that of traditional optical fiber switches, the prices of new full-featured products are far higher than those of mature simple products. In medium-sized projects between 2 million and 0.5 million, the expensive price of middle-aged smart switch products still puts itself at a disadvantage. Even if users have fully accepted the virtual storage solution, they are willing to take technical risks, however, if you want to make a purchase, they will find that users must choose between the virtual storage network and the higher-performance disk array. After all, users' investment is limited, the high performance of the disk array is a visible indicator. In contrast, various virtualization functions are not energized. Large projects will inevitably lead to fierce competition. large manufacturers will use brand advantages, public relations, service commitments, market reputation, and even political influence to compete for all the resources. In contrast, the initial smart switch will be ruthlessly eliminated in this competition, which has already been proved.