InfiniBand of Brothers

Competition can be fierce in storage networking, as in other industries, with rivals looking to undercut one another in any way possible.

Consider the interlocking interests of SAN vendors, NAS vendors, backup software vendors, Fibre Channel switch vendors, etc. Even when they come together on industry trade groups, it takes years to develop standards that interoperate.

The exception that proves the rule is InfiniBand. The vendors highlighted in our latest Byte and Switch Insider, High-Speed Interconnect: Race to the Data Center, know they have to cooperate to survive. Left for dead as a group a few years back, they know the importance of hanging together to win the trust of the industry (see InfiniBand Clan Gives Thanks).

And it seems to be working. Engenio Information Technologies Inc., for example, recently added an InfiniBand connection option to its latest midrange SAN system. One of the things that won over Engenio was InfiniBand's compatibility among vendors a sharp contract to Fibre Channel, for which each vendor has its own architecture.

"We're seeing significantly less interoperability issues [with InfiniBand] than we've had with Fibre Channel," says Stan Skelton, senior director of strategic planning for Engenio. "You avoid the issues like in Fibre Channel, where every vendor has a totally different architecture and driver, and you take that across operating systems."InfiniBand vendors use common drivers throughout their range of devices, and they use groups such as the InfiniBand Trade Association and OpenIB Alliance to ensure heterogeneous support.

"The InfiniBand ecosystem has elected not to compete on driver architectures, and it has worked out interoperability issues up front," Skelton continues. "All the HCAs [host channel adapters] out there will run the same driver, no matter who you buy it from. That's a strength against incumbents like Fibre Channel."

Another example of cooperation among InfiniBand vendors is that Mellanox Technologies Ltd., the primary silicon vendor, stopped selling switches in May to avoid competing with its customers, such as Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), SilverStorm Technologies Inc., and Voltaire Inc.

Some would call this "sound business practices," but you won't see Fibre Channel titan EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) quit selling storage gear to avoid competing with other companies – such as IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) – that also buy software from EMC.

Of course, there's enough money in Fibre Channel SANs that EMC, IBM, and HP can eat from the same trough occasionally, while kicking each other the rest of the time. InfiniBand is a smaller world, especially after the consolidation of the last few years thinned its ranks. When Cisco bought Topspin, the juice brought to InfiniBand by the deal might just have saved Mellanox, SilverStorm, and Voltaire from extinction.Still, the example set by InfiniBand could clearly scale upward. It could be prophetic for Fibre Channel vendors facing the prospect of a dwindling market as 10-Gbit/s Ethernet gains ground.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

The report, High-Speed Interconnect: Race to the Data Center, is available as part of an annual subscription (12 monthly issues) to Byte and Switch Insider, priced at $1,350. Individual reports are available for $900. For more information, or to subscribe, please visit: www.byteandswitch.com/insider