Peaceful Coexistence

Storage companies collaborate on cross-vendor compatibility project

Six storage vendors and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) have embarked on an initiative to improve interoperability and multivendor customer support for storage area networking (SAN) solutions. One of the primary goals of SNIA's Supported Solutions Forum (SSF) is to "promote customer adoption of storage networking solutions by providing assurances of working configurations supported by vendors."

As part of the initiative, Brocade Communications Systems Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., IBM, and McData Corp. have collaborated on two open SAN solutions that support interoperable data zones, or "coexisting heterogeneous data arrays," for four different storage products on shared, high-speed Fibre Channel networks, also known as fabrics.

Marc Oswald, chair of the SSF and Brocade's director of technology alliances, said that the SSF's efforts complement standards testing conducted by other storage organizations, such as the Fibre Channel Industry Association.

Storage professionals struggling to manage multivendor SANs are relieved that some joint efforts are finally underway. "We applaud each of these companies for cooperatively bringing a new level of SAN interoperability to customers to make it easier to manage large, open, heterogeneous SANs," said Rick Stracner, storage architect at Acxiom Corp., a customer data integration solutions provider.

SSF member companies are working on additional interoperability goals and customer support issues. For example, SSF founding members Compaq, EMC, Hitachi, and IBM have signed bilateral cooperative support agreements (CSAs) for joint customer support in multivendor storage environments. Oswald added that interoperability for tape drives and backup solutions is also a top priority.

Wagner Rios, AMR Research analyst for enabling technologies, thinks the CSAs will help customers by minimizing finger-pointing among vendors when technical support issues arise. "This collaborative effort ... provides open connectivity and access to resources in multiplatform networks so that organizations responding to changing market conditions can swiftly engage in ventures," Rios added.

— Claudia Willen

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