Brocade Communications Systems Inc has added NEC Corp to its shopping list of server vendors seeking to hook up storage area networking gear to their servers using the Brocade fibre channel switch. Under the OEM agreement, NEC will get its hands on Brocade’s Silkwork 2800 fibre channel switch for use with its Express Windows NT server range. The financial implications of the deal were kept under wraps. Brocade’s Silkworm switch connects servers with storage devices such as RAID systems and tape libraries to enable companies to create storage area networks (SANs). Although still fraught with standards problems, the SAN market is expected to grow from a $2m industry this year to over $15m by the year 2002, according to a recent report by Dataquest.
Peter Tarrant, VP of marketing at Brocade said that although NEC had announced agreements with Brocade for use of its fibre channel switch and has the host bus adapter part of the SAN figured out with other vendors, the company still does not have the complete picture. They have yet to say which storage device vendor they’re going to use, he said. NEC was unable to say when it would be filling in these gaps. NEC emphasized two key features available with Brocade’s Silkworm 16-port switch including universal ports for simplified installation and hardware port zoning for increased security, plus hot-swappable redundant power supplies for increased data availability.
Separately, StorageTek Corp announced the latest version of its storage management software, Reel 5.0. Storage devices traditionally have been dedicated, or directly attached to a single server mainly because mixed data from different operating systems, such as Unix and Windows NT, could not reside on the same tape drive. StorageTek claims its Reel 5.0 software overcomes this, minimizing downtime and speeding up server response time. Pricing for Reel 5.0 server software begins at $3,500 and $500 for client software and is available now.
