Correct, if they don't move intelligently and quickly, they WILL be left
behind here.  We have done our paper evaluation of 5 products and are now
waiting till mid-year to see how the top two contenders deal with SAN and
what their direction will be.  This one feature(?) will weigh heavily in
our choice to stay the course or switch.  We can't afford to buy local tape
solutions and hang them off large servers anymore.  We simply push too much
data around.

I asked the same question of IBM in Oct 98 at a small conference in SFO.
If they are still working on it, SOMETHING should be coming forward, who
knows when.  I told them at that time that whatever it is, it should be
fairly standard, because we wont be buying any SSAs to make it happen.
We'll see.

If they come out with a good SAN solution and a multithreaded client and
API, then they will improve their future viability around here.

David Hendrix
dmhendri AT fedex DOT com





Nathan King <nathan.king AT USAA DOT COM> on 02/03/99 10:47:34 AM

Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>



 To:      ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU

 cc:      (bcc: DAVID HENDRIX/216832/ITD/FEDEX)



 Subject: Re: ADSM and SAN









You're absolutely right Dwight. ADSM Developement really need to address
this quickly otherwise they're going to be left behind!
They especially need to get going with Fibre Channel development.
Although Fibre Channel standards have yet to be set, IBM appears to be
showing little interest and is instead pushing SSA which essentially noone
else is interested in except IBM ofcourse. I'm not demeaning SSA - it is in
a lot of respects superior to Fibre , but the market appears to believe
otherwise.

Nathan

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Dwight Cook [SMTP:decook AT AMOCO DOT COM]
        Sent:   Wednesday, February 03, 1999 10:27 AM
        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        Subject:        Re: ADSM and SAN

             Have you been to an IBM storage presentation lately ? ? ?

             'bout 6 months ago I brought up such topics...

             Answers were... "it is in the works..."

             This is where adsm investments will pay off in the future and
be
             functional through continued business growth, with the big SAN
push,
             the adsm server will be integrated into the SAN server and
basically
             the backups/archives & restores/retrieves will actually never
hit the
             network.

             When this will happen? ? ? ?

             later,
                   Dwight


        ______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
        Subject: ADSM and SAN
        Author:  JButt (JButt AT GECTS.GE DOT COM) at unix,mime
        Date:    2/3/99 9:25 AM


        Consider the following setup
        An RS/6000 as the ADSM server connected via ultra scsi to a tape
library
        like 3575. A couple of NT and Sun servers connected to the same
library
        via ultra scsi acting as clients to the RS/6000  ADSM server.

        All the systems are also part of a LAN

        How would you ensure that tthe data path is not along the LAN but
along
        the ultra scsi attachment. I dont think we can use the sharedmem
option
        in this case because the server and the client are not on the same
node.
        If we use tcpip, the data will go along the LAN. In short how can
adsm
        integrate in a true SAN environment.

        Am i correct in these assumptions or am i missing something.

        Thanks in advance.

        Jawad Khayyam Butt

        Senior Integration Specialist
        GE Capital IT Solutions
        5985 Mclaughlin Road, Mississauga, ON L5R 1B8

        Tel: 905-568-9707x7151     Email: jbutt AT gects.ge DOT com