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Storage:
InfiniCon's Next-Gen Computing
Fabric Showcased At SNW
InfiniCon Systems, a premier provider of shared I/O and switching solutions
for next-generation server networks, featured its InfinIO 7000 Shared I/O and
Clustering System at the 2003 Spring Storage Networking World's
Interoperability and Solutions Demo (SNW ISD) in Phoenix, AZ.
A member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), InfiniCon
collaborated with major industry vendors at SNW to demonstrate how InfiniBand
technology -- at the core of InfiniCon's InfinIO family -- makes it possible
to scale, simplify, and share today's critical storage and server
infrastructure, while gaining higher-levels of compute performance.
As part of the New and Emerging Technologies Solutions theme at SNW ISD,
InfiniCon's InfinIO 7000 will function both as a 10 Gigabit interconnect for
server-to-server communications, and provide integrated gateways -- or shared
I/O connectivity -- for InfiniBand-based servers to use for seamless access to
Fibre Channel storage resources and Ethernet clients. For its demonstration,
the InfinIO 7000 will support a multi-node, clustered server environment
running parallel database applications from Oracle (9i) and IBM (DB/2), and a
high-performance video-on-demand application. Commercial database
applications, scaled on commodity servers, can obtain up to a tenfold boost in
bandwidth when enabled by a low-latency, InfiniBand fabric such as the InfinIO
7000.
The clustered servers in InfiniCon's demo were connected through the
InfinIO
7000's shared I/O capability to a Network Appliance F825c storage appliance --
configured to support both Ethernet NAS and Fibre Channel SAN applications --
to highlight how simply and cost-effectively InfiniBand-based servers can be
integrated into storage and network infrastructures in today's
datacenters.
"The SNIA and its dedicated membership continue to meet end user business
and
technology needs by testing and demonstrating production-ready multi-vendor
storage networking solutions," said Wayne Adams, SNW Governing Board member,
SNIA. "Twice a year, the Interoperability and Solutions Demo at SNW features
new and proven technological developments that advance the world of trusted
storage networking solutions. InfiniCon's contributions and collaborative
efforts, evident in its shared I/O and clustering technology, have helped make
this year's demo one of the most innovative yet."
A Dynamic Infrastructure for Fabric/Grid Computing
The InfinIO 7000's combination of low-latency, server-to-server switching
and
shared I/O functionality provide the dynamic infrastructure required to enable
the shift in enterprise data centers to fabric, grid, and cluster-based
computing. InfinIO's technology empowers data center managers to use commodity
servers to support database and high-performance computer clustering
applications -- functionality once reserved exclusively for mainframes. It
allows new server capacity to be deployed in hours versus days, and can
provision an existing server network in minutes versus hours -- all while
slashing the cost of providing connectivity to these servers by an average of
over 40%.
"Accelerating application performance, improving asset utilization, and
reducing computing complexity are core challenges for today's datacenter
manager," stated InfiniCon chief technology officer, Todd Matters. "Our
demonstrations with SNIA at SNW underscore the vital infrastructure role the
InfinIO 7000 will play in enabling new computing models that address these
core challenges, at cost-levels that make good business sense."
The SNW ISD featured more than 40 leading storage and networking vendors in
demonstrations segmented into eight theme areas that cover multiple aspects of
building, managing, testing, and protecting storage networks.
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