NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: ANNE SKAMAROCK on
STORAGE
01/15/02
Today's focus: Whatever happened to InfiniBand?

Dear Wincenty Kaminski,

In this issue:

* How much longer are we to wait for InfiniBand products?
* Featured reader resource

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Today's focus: Whatever happened to InfiniBand?

By Anne Skamarock

It's been mighty quiet on the InfiniBand front these days! It
seems not so long ago that vendors were predicting the
appearance of InfiniBand products in the second half of 2001.
There seems to be quite an echo in the InfiniBand product
display rooms today.

O.K., the final specification wasn't released until June 2001
and the country had a few other things occupying it in the
autumn of 2001, not the least of which was the significant drop
in the economy. But I've been hearing about how great
InfiniBand is going to be for the last two years! Come on!

So you think I'm impatient? Yes I'm impatient! We have CPUs
that run at gigahertz rates that are data-starved today because
the I/O architecture can't keep up! "Add another host bus
adapter, maybe THAT will help!" NOT! For most open-systems
computers (yes, even the high-end ones) the internal bus can't
keep up. InfiniBand's time is NOW.

Why, you ask? Well, let me ask a question back. Why do you
think 2G bit/sec Fibre Channel hasn't taken off like a bolt?
Let's see... hmmm, perhaps it's because there are no computers
that can fill a 2G-bit/sec pipe today. Perhaps most 1G-bit/sec
pipes are currently under-used?

Which takes me back to last week's "Storage resolutions"
newsletter in which I suggested that companies should
understand what they have today before buying more storage
"stuff." I spoke about disk capacity and left out
infrastructure capacity. Take a look at Finisar's QoS product
for determining storage-area networking infrastructure
capacity. It uses in-line probes to determine actual bandwidth
rates form the hosts, through the infrastructure to the
storage. It also can tell you if you have oversubscribed your
disk logical unit numbers.

Getting back to InfiniBand, I can't wait to see the products
roll off the line and start to hear customer testimonials. I
was hoping these would come as Christmas presents to us all but
I guess we'll all have to wait for the dog days of summer.

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To contact Anne Skamarock:

Anne Skamarock is an analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates (http://www.enterprisemanagement.com).  She has
worked with networked storage for the last 15 years and is
currently focused on the storage practice within EMA. She
can be reached at mailto:askamarock@enterprisemanagement.com
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RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Finisar
http://www.finisar.com/

InfiniBand Trade Association
http://www.infinibandta.org/home.php3

Partnerships to dominate CA's plans
Network World, 01/14/02
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/128955_01-14-2002.html

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