EqualLogic Unfurls iSCSI Flag

Startup EqualLogic Inc. -- which is officially shipping its iSCSI-based storage system this week -- believes it has a first-mover advantage over larger vendors that are afraid of eating their own children with IP SANs (see EqualLogic Ships iSCSI Array).

Peter Hayden, CEO of Nashua, N.H.-based EqualLogic, says the hesitation from larger vendors in rolling out iSCSI systems stems from the fact that they're still focused on the entry-level segments and haven't identified the larger, potentially more lucrative, midtier market for IP SANs.

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), for example, expects to tap this market in 12 months. The iSCSI protocol, standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), transmits block-level storage over IP networks (see HP: iSCSI Still a Year Off and iSCSI Gets Go-Ahead).

"What people are missing -- and what they're trying to hide from -- is the midmarket enterprise opportunity for iSCSI," he says. "And it is substantial. They're worried about cannibalizing sales of their existing product lines."

Hayden argues that only perhaps one-fourth of any enterprise's data center storage will be attached to a Fibre Channel SAN, leaving a large population of servers that aren't currently connected to network storage. "Customers are looking for simpler, more cost-effective ways to build a SAN," says Hayden.Of course, EqualLogic ever-so-humbly proposes that its first product, the PeerStorage Array 100E, provides the answer. The company describes the system as providing a pool of self-managing storage that connects to standard iSCSI hosts over Gigabit Ethernet, with performance characteristics that match that of midrange Fibre Channel arrays. Each 3U-high 100E unit can have up to 14 Serial ATA disk drives (currently either 120-Gbyte or 180-Gbyte 7,200-RPM disk drives are available), for a maximum of 2.5 Tbytes.

Beyond that, up to 32 of those individual arrays can be aggregated, for up to 80 TBytes in a single system. EqualLogic says that when new nodes are added to the SAN, the arrays automatically identify each other and the system dynamically increases the amount of storage available to a given group, which can have up to 1,024 volumes.

Pricing for the 100E starts at $28,500 for 800 Gbytes, and EqualLogic says its pricing goes as low as 1.2 cents per Mbyte. That price tag includes management software, load-balancing software, all the self-tuning capabilities, and unlimited snapshots.

Analysts say EqualLogic is one of the first in the market to really take advantage of iSCSI, as opposed to layering the protocol on top of an existing system, as Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) has done (see NetApp Blitzes on iSCSI).

"EqualLogic is not just ramming storage on top of IP -- they're really in position to exploit the technology," says Robert Gray, an analyst with IDC.As for performance, the company claims each 100E array delivers 20,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and 200 Mbytes sequential data reads per second. "That's neck-and-neck with a comparably-sized Fibre Channel array," Hayden says. For the sake of comparison, HP quotes its MSA 1000 as running at 30,000 IOPS and 200 Mbyte/s throughput.

OK, but the real proof is in customer wins. The company has already shipped several orders and is ahead of its projections, Hayden says. He adds that the size of the SANs that EqualLogic has sold to date range in size from 1 TByte to 6 TBytes. But while he insists that EqualLogic has lined up a few "large financial accounts" in Boston and New York, he's still unable to name them (see EqualLogic Draws Bank's Interest).

The one referenceable customer EqualLogic could tell us about is Broadbus Technologies Inc., a startup based in Boxborough, Mass., that is developing a video-streaming system.

George Kajos, vice president of engineering, says Broadbus is not only using EqualLogic's iSCSI arrays internally in its development labs, but also plans to integrate the storage into its video-server system. Besides offering potentially cheaper storage, the EqualLogic system offers the ability to dynamically expand without any manual reconfiguration, he says. "You can't be retrofitting your environment after the fact," says Kajos.

And while Broadbus expects to offer a Fibre Channel storage option as well, "over the long haul, TCP/IP always wins," Kajos says.Meanwhile, EqualLogic says it's "reference-selling" iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs), and says it has tested its system with adapters from Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Alacritech Inc., Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC). Hayden says the company is also working to get certified with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), which is slated to ship its iSCSI driver for Windows later this month.

As for whether or not to actually use an iSCSI-optimized HBA, Hayden says it depends entirely on the application and the server it's running on. "If you have a fast server and your app is not particularly CPU-intensive, then running without an accelerated HBA is just fine," he says.

While some of the big vendors, including HP, Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) haven't pulled the iSCSI trigger yet, a few other startups are attacking this same space, including Intransa Inc. and LeftHand Networks (see Hospital Attaches LeftHand and Intransa Cranks Up IP SAN).

But unlike LeftHand, which runs its own proprietary protocol over Ethernet, the EqualLogic system doesn't require anything special on the server side. "Our goal is to not introduce another dimension into the compatibility matrix," Hayden says. "Before we have closed every customer account, they ask, 'If you're going add any software to the server, the deal is off.' "

EqualLogic has received $27 million to date from Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, and TD Capital. And it's staying lean with around 60 employees, Hayden says (see EqualLogic Tallies $15M).Does EqualLogic's launch represent one of the first stirrings of the widely expected iSCSI revolution? Or is it just a shot in the dark? (See Metcalfe: FC 'Beginning to Smell'.) Either way, Fibre Channel should increasingly expect to see IP on the battlefield.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch