SAN Leaders Unite to Promote Standards
Several leading manufacturers of storage solutions hosted a teleconference today announcing plans for the development and acceptance of standards for multi-vendor Storage Area Networks (SANs).
Among the companies lining up to support the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) in its quest to accelerate the evolution and acceptance of SAN standards are: IBM Corp.; Compaq Computer Corp.; Dell Computer Corp.; EMC Corp.; Hewlett-Packard Company; Quantum Corp.; Sequent Computer Systems Inc.; StorageTek; and Sun Microsystems Inc.
"The industry is rapidly moving toward a networked approach to solve the problems of rapid growth in data storage," says Walter Hinton, chief strategist with StorageTeck (Louisville, Colo.) "IT environments consist of systems from multiple vendors. The only way the industry can offer flexible, shared storage is by agreeing upon standards."
One of the group's first efforts will be to design specifications for devices such as: common interface modules for storage devices; SNMP MIB for SAN devices; a disk resource management architecture; and hold-independent SAN movers, which facilitate peer-to-peer communication between devices.
"IBM is committed to providing technical expertise, intellectual property and financial resources to SNIA," says Clod Barrera, director of Storage System Strategy for IBM. "Through this cooperative effort, SNIA can develop an effective framework for the management of network area storage networks."
--L. Greenemeier