EMC Takes Storage Router for a Spin

EMC Corp.s (NYSE: EMC) anticipated virtualization software is virtually real.

Here's the skinny: The EMC Storage Router made its debut at Storage Network World here this week, but only in ballroom demonstrations (see EMC on Virtualization: Wait for Us). And while the product is running in four customer beta sites, it isn’t expected to be released before mid-2005.

EMC’s router is software that sits on an intelligent switch. For the demo, EMC used switches from Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to move a 200-Mbyte movie clip from an EMC Clariion array to a Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) EVA array. Then EMC moved the movie back using the Cisco switch.

The purpose of the demonstration was to show the router can move data from one array to another vendor’s array with no disruption and no downtime -- and it looks as if it worked. The first version of the router will not support remote replication, but EMC executives say it will be built into future versions.

When the router ships, it will support high-end storage from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), as well as HP’s midrange arrays, EMC says. It will also support intelligent switches from McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), just as soon as those switches are ready later next year.The router accelerates what EMC software boss Mark Lewis calls a “catfight” over the best ways to virtualize storage. EMC is a proponent of out-of-band virtualization, while IBM uses an inband appliance running its SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software. Hitachi takes another approach with its Tagmastore system, running virtualization in cache in the controller (see Hitachi Struts Mr. Universal and EMC & IBM in Virtual Skirmish).

So EMC’s demo brought the expect sniping from the opposition, who claimed to be unimpressed with Storage Router’s ballroom dance. “We’re leading the market in heterogenous support,” says Jeff Barnett, IBM’s manager of marketing strategy for open software. “EMC is trying to stall the market by talking about future releases that are a year away.”

Hitachi CTO Hu Yoshida says EMC is doing virtualization in the wrong place. “It doesn’t belong in the core of the network,” he says. “It belongs in the controller.”

EMC’s Lewis says his only worry about the storage router is that customers might be soured on virtualization by the time his product comes out.

“I just fear that if we’re the twelfth one to try and sell it to them, they'll hold us responsible for the first eleven,” Lewis says.— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch