Onaro Ships Change Manager

Formerly secretive startup Onaro Inc. is clamoring for attention now that it's shipped its first product (see Onaro Intros SANscreen). It may not have to try too hard.

Onaro's software, called SANscreen, is getting some good reviews from analysts and at least one customer for being able to predict the effects of changes made to SAN and NAS gear. SANscreen, Onaro claims, can ensure changes don't cause technical problems or violate in-house policies.

If a switch is added, for instance, SANscreen checks for a redundant path, one that doesn't interfere with other paths, in case of failure. It can ensure performance isn't trashed when an array is added, or that a user doesn't violate security by getting access to an off-limits drive. And it keeps track of changes made, reporting that all the steps in the process took place in the right order.

SANscreen does all this by automatically discovering SAN devices, including storage arrays, hosts, and switches on Fibre Channel and iSCSI networks. It uses the info it finds to create a basic model of the network, to which it applies specially devised algorithms to predict the effects of real or planned changes. The software runs on a Windows server, requires no software elsewhere in the network, and does its discovery out of band, or off that portion of the network that handles live data. A starter system can cost less than $50,000, the vendor claims.

At least one customer says SANscreen solved a knotty problem. "We used to spend a lot of time fire fighting," says Robert Shinn, a principal at State Street Global Advisors, which offers investment services. Dealing with the aftereffects of adding users, storage, and devices to the firm's SAN of over 1,000 ports was so complicated that it kept some of the company's 20-odd SAN administrators too busy to do much else.Onaro's package, Shinn says, freed nearly half those administrators to become "business analysts," with more productive things to do than set their hair on fire every time a SAN change is made. Shinn says Onaro was the only vendor he found that could offer this kind of predictive change management without tagging it to a specific vendor's storage hardware. He runs SANscreen with equipment from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), EqualLogic Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), and Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP).

There are a few loose threads: When asked for the specific vendors whose equipment SANscreen works with, CEO Shai Scharf didn't offer any details, saying only that the product works with "all leading" SAN equipment. Also, SANscreen doesn't yet work with tape storage -- though Onaro says it will add that capability later this year. State Street's Shinn says he'd also like to see the vendor beef up the performance reporting capabilities, though he isn't specific.

There's nothing particularly unique about SANscreen's technology. For years, network management products, particularly those designed for Internet Protocol (IP) environments, have used autodiscovery, network modeling, and simulation to prevent network trouble and identify the root causes of problems when they do happen. What Onaro seems to be first in doing is applying these techniques to storage networks.

"They are the first and currently only company I know of that attacks... SAN change management," writes Marc Staimer, CEO of Dragon Slayer Consulting, in an email. "Their product... correlates Storage LUN maps, SAN zoning, and SAN pathing policies... This is incredibly important in a dynamic Storage/SAN environment."

Without something like SANscreen, a lot of companies wind up creating SAN islands to avoid the problems that result from making changes to a big, complex SAN, Staimer says. "It can take 30 days just to assess the impact of a change," he asserts.Up to now, Onaro's been chary of lifting its veil -- a tack that seems fitting for a group of ex-military intelligence geeks from Israel. Even news of $7.5 million in new funding didn't draw a lot of information (see Onaro Lifts Its Cover). But with the product in shipment, Onaro's Scharf is confident of future success, and seems impatient with questions that hint that he's got anything less than a winner in the stable. "We do not offer a tool. It's a complete solution. We touch the nerves of customers by discovering all the problems they don't know about."

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch