StorCloud InterOp Fabric

Cary Whitney
NERSC

The inter-op StorCloud Fabric is a true Storage Area Network (SAN) of next generation. This SAN provides storage as a commodity to the servers irrespective of the SAN switch vendor providing the Fiber Channel Fabric. The inter-op Fabric is a SAN comprised of Fiber Channel switches from Brocade, Cisco and McDATA. A mix of heterogeneous storage arrays connected to these fiber channel switches enables servers to access heterogeneous "Storage as a commodity". This empowers data centers / enterprises to create a completely "Tiered , On Demand Storage Area Network."

The inter-op fabric also addresses the security, fault isolation and ease of management concerns by using vendor specific methods:

• Brocade uses LSANs to logically partition SANs for Fabric separation and fault isolation
• Cisco introduced VSANs (Virtual SAN) to carve out multiple mutually exclusive Fabrics from a single Physical switch, and is coupled with Inter VSAN Routing (IVR) for selectively allowing Fiber channel traffic to be routed from one Fabric to the other
• McDATA employs partitions on their new generation switch to create independent fabrics and the SAN routing Appliance to route traffic between fabrics selectively

Click here for more info.

Team Members:
John Gustitis, Brocade
Ravi Neelakant, Cisco
Mike Rose, McDATA