While storage vendors debate the relative merits of FiberChannel and SCSI for storage area networks, a UK start-up is touting a switch for extending SCSI buses over ATMs which, it argues puts the SAN into the WAN. Cambridge-based Storage Area Networks Ltd is seeking both indirect distribution through channels and OEM deals for its DiskLink technology, though sales and marketing director Andrew Romney acknowledges that the former are almost certain to come first.
As for its option to start out converting SCSI to ATM, the criteria, explained Romney, were purely commercial. Though FiberChannel is currently flavor of the month with the storage vendors, around 95% of the SANs in place run over SCSI, he said. The company intends to have a FiberChannel-to-ATM converter on the market by the end of this year.
What differentiates SAN Ltd in the storage space, said Romney, is the networking rather than storage background of its founders who created the company as a spin-off from K-Net Ltd, the UK’s largest ATM integrator, in mid 1998. It has since been working to narrow the distance constraints separating SCSI (six meters) and FiberChannel (10 km).
If a corporation has 60km to cover between storage devices, it currently has to acquire dark fiber from a telco, which makes the price non-viable, Romney said. SAN’s DiskLink product should help to overcome this problem by using ATM to link islands of storage devices over leased lines.
SAN’s closest competition comes from SCSI extender makers, such as Apcon Inc and AC Technologies. However these companies are taking a SCSI-to-something proprietary route, according to Romney, and also suffer from being unable to support bi-directional links and from serious distance limitations.
Computer Network Technology, a mainframe connectivity company, also shows on the edge SAN’s competitor radar screen, although the two companies’ technologies could yet turn out to be complementary. Indeed, SAN has already sold its Unix and NT oriented DiskLink products to CNT for use in test environments.
