10-Gig Trends Up

Outside of scattered high-end applications, 10-Gbit/s technology is still scarce. But there are signs that interest is slowly taking root in the enterprise, as publicity surrounding new products continues. For examples, see:

"The place where we see 10-gig happening now is primarily in LAN aggregation," says Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at the Linley Group consultancy. "Ten-gig ports are showing up in LAN switches."

But even in LAN switching, 10-Gbit/s makes up only a tiny percentage of the overall market. The Linley Group estimates that some 700,000 10-Gbit/s switch ports will be shipped this year, double the amount in 2006. Still, compare that to the 90 million switch ports shipped overall last year, and it's clear that 10-Gbit/s enterprise networking is only at the start of its adoption curve.

This week, several vendors made announcements designed to help interest along. Here's a rundown:

Intransa
Intransa unveiled the StorStac PCU100, a 10-Gbit/s-connectible version of its IP SAN. (See Neterion Picked by Intransa.) The announcement draws attention to Intransa's approach of combining controller units and disk enclosures in a modular fashion to fit flexible capacity/performance requirements.Up to four StorStac PCU100s, for instance, can be preconfigured by the supplier with so-called Storage Capacity Enclosures (SCEs) containing 3.75 Tbytes to 12 Tbyes of disk storage. A switched connection between controllers and storage allows volumes to be moved flexibly between units. An entry-level system, with one controller and 4 Tbytes of storage, costs about $76,000.

"I was attracted by Intransa's architecture with independently scaleable controllers for front-end bandwidth and interconnects between controllers and drives," says Douglas F. Gibbs, pathology bioinformatics manager at the University of Michiganat Ann Arbor, who is evaluating Intransa's new system for medical recordkeeping. "Every drive is a peer to the controller," he says.

Gibbs, whose network includes a mix of mainframes, DAS, and SAN, has been using an application that stores digitized images for teaching purposes. Medical students work with Web-accessible microscope images, for example, instead of actual slides, which ensures they're all working from the same view with the same information.

When Intransa sent him a system packaged with 10-Gbit/s Ethernet HBAs from Neterion and Myricom, Gibbs set it up on his network with two HP Proliant servers and a Fujitsu mainframe. The medical image system throughput went up about 40 percent right away, he says. But he wanted better. Using a file copy utility, he increased the size of the increments used by the SAN to store files. Throughput shot up to 375 Mbytes per second, he says, a rate capable of using 70 percent of a 10-Gbit/s pipe.

Gibbs is still waiting for approval to purchase the system he's sold on. Intransa, meantime, is eager to help other prospective buyers tweak their applications the way Gibbs has, and today it launched a certification program to help things along. Intransa says it will ensure other software and equipment will be configured for optimal use of a 10-Gbit/s storage network. (See Intransa Debuts Program.)Neterion

The 10GBase-T standard for running 10-Gbit/s Ethernet over copper cabling is still a work in progress when it comes to implementation. But NIC vendor Neterion plans to demonstrate an adapter built around the technology at the Interop tradeshow later this month. (See 10GBase-T Adapters Debut, More on 10GBase-T , and 10GBase-T Compliance in Doubt.)

The Xframe II adapter is based on a 10GBase-T transceiver from Teranetics. (See Neterion Demos With Teranetics.) Intransa has packed the adapter into its StorSac PCU100 device. (See above.) Neterion also has similar transceiver-based deals involving Teranetics, Chelsio, and Tehuti Networks. (See Tehuti Adds Three to Family.)

Stonesoft
Another vendor looking to tap into user demand for high-speed video and voice data is Stonesoft, which took the wraps off a family of security devices for network traffic this week. (See Stonesoft Launches StoneGate.)

At the high end of this range is the three-rack-unit-high StoneGate FW-5100, which is essentially a 10-Gbit/s firewall device. A total of 16 of these appliances can be clustered together, according to Stonesoft, which is touting the product around Managed Service Providers' data centers and enterprises looking to share data with remote locations. (See R&M Explores Managed Services and Gartner Sees Services Boom.)

The FW-5100, which is available now, is priced at $84,350. Laurie Douglas, Stonesoft's marketing director, tells Byte and Switch that the vendor is close to clinching its first deals. "There's a couple in the education sector and also in the financial services area," she says, adding that universities, in particular, are looking for high-speed appliances that can protect sensitive student data.At least one enterprise IT manager tells Byte and Switch that he is now seriously considering 10-Gbit/s Ethernet. "We're not using it at the moment, but it's at the top of my list for my trip to Interop," says Roy Rabey, IT manager at Dallas-based Ensemble Studios, which developed the Age of Empires computer game series. (See Gaming Companies Eye Storage, Interop: Mixed Messages on InfiniBand, and Enterprises Still Not Sold on Grid.)

The exec explains that 10-Gbit/s would be a great fit for his firm: "The sort of work that we do is so network intensive, with large files [being sent], that anything that could speed this up would improve our development pipeline."

Although Rabey does not have any specific vendors' solutions in mind, he tells Byte and Switch that he is thinking about deploying a 10-Gbit/s backbone and possibly extending this to some of the desktops used by the studio's games developers.

Some users have already cited cost issues as the major barrier in the way of 10-Gbit/s deployments, although Rabey says that he delayed his own plans while standards crystallized and vendors ramped up their efforts. (See 10-Gig IP SANs Hit Bleeding Edge.) "I have been keeping my ear to the ground [and] waiting for the market to mature," he says.

— James Rogers, Senior Editor, and Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch