Re: [Veritas-bu] market coverage of tape libraries and SAN switches

Data Encryption for backups. Wow…what a topic. We’ve tried doing encryption via Netbackup and the tape backup performance went from 60MB/s per tape drive to 6MB/s per tape drive. No central key management and required manual tracking of encryption keys.

Now it’s LTO-4 tape drives with central key management or T10000 tape drives to a central key management host. Performance is much better, but IMHO, not exactly there just yet.

Thank You,

Dennis Peacock

EBCA

Acxiom Corporation

501-342-6232 (office)

From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Rosenkoetter, Gabriel
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 9:22 AM
To: Shyam Hazari
Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] market coverage of tape libraries and SAN switches

My memory from the salesliming is that encryption is a "fabric service", meaning that it can be applied per VSAN (and, thus, across all VSANs, was my understanding).

The whole fabric service bit seemed a bit handwavy to me. As long as you've got one module enabling it in the 95xx frame, you can do it for all ports, and they're sure it'll have enough bandwidth. I question that just based on scaling the crypto calculations, but I haven't tested it one way or the other.

--
gabriel rosenkoetter
Radian Group Inc, Unix/Linux/VMware Sysadmin / Backup & Recovery
gabriel.rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz, 215 231 1556

From: Shyam Hazari [mailto:shazari AT gmail DOT com]
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:19 AM
To: Rosenkoetter, Gabriel
Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] market coverage of tape libraries and SAN switches

Gabriel,

Great Point.

Can this feature be enabled per VSAN or on the entire switch ?

-Shyam

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 8:45 AM, Rosenkoetter, Gabriel <Gabriel.Rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz> wrote:

It's worth noting, on the Cisco fabric switch side, that they offer a feature that Brocade does not but that's increasingly attractive for FC-attached tape: in-stream encryption without having to use a pass-through device (like Decru, now owned by NetApp, sells) and without having to use tape drives that do that job themselves (LTO-4). The whole "where to do tape backup encryption" question is a huge can of worms (fun religious topics I'd really rather not argue about: ability to migrate keys to another system, comparison of various products' key management functionality), but if it's something you want to do and not something you already do (cf, key migration: short version is that there isn't a good way), it's worth considering if you're building out new tape fabric.

--
gabriel rosenkoetter
Radian Group Inc, Unix/Linux/VMware Sysadmin / Backup & Recovery
gabriel.rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz, 215 231 1556

From: Ed Wilts [mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 1:08 PM
To: Shai Harmelin
Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] market coverage of tape libraries and SAN switches

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Shai Harmelin <shai.harmelin AT isilon DOT com> wrote:

I'm curious if you or anyone on the list can provide some guidance into who are the 3 main SAN switch vendors and who are the 3 main tape library vendors in the enterprise market and how big is their cumulative market share respectively.

I'll talk to the switch side of things - as a customer, not a vendor. Brocade has traditionally been (by far) the largest edge switch vendor. McData is/was 2nd, and then Qlogic. Brocade has since bought out McData. Qlogic edge switches go into sites where the customers want to do things very cheaply. It's not that the switches are all that bad because I haven't heard that if they are - it's that Qlogic has to compete on price because of the Brocade dominance.

On the director side, McData had the numbers for the longest time but Brocade was catching up fast. Before the merger, it was roughly a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 split between Brocade, McData, and Cisco. Brocade now has 2/3 of the market.

>>From what I hear, Cisco directors go into sites that are already Cisco shops (or educational institutions that pay a fraction of what commercial customers pay) and at which the network groups manage the SAN. Brocade goes into just about everywhere else.

If you're an HP shop, you're adding Brocade gear by default. They sold the McData switches as an afterthought and now sell Cisco gear, but they'll always push Brocade first. For EMC, it was traditionally McData all the way - after all, McData was spun off of EMC in the first place. I don't know what they're doing now - their spec sheets on the "Connectrix" line lists the Brocade equivalents first and then Cisco.

.../Ed

--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org

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