[Robin Frost]

Bob, thanks for your questions, here we go…

From the XSan forum, Robin writes –
everyone on this forum thread seems to be equating ‘Ethernet’ with ‘TCP/IP over Ethernet’ which SATA-SAN storage is not using.

REPLY – please explain your connectivity – are you using Gig Ethernet, aggrigated 2 port Gig ethernet, 10 Gig E or Fibre channel with a fibre card in the host (and a fibre switch) ?

[answer] Our connectivity is Ethernet – but raw Ethernet i.e. point-to-point, mac-address to mac-address, without the overhead of TCP/IP, as stated above. We can use any number of GbE ports or 10GbE ports, copper or fiber. We are not ‘link aggregating’ ports like in TCP/IP as we don’t need to. We don’t use or need fibre channel although we can easily coexist with legacy fibre channel storage which gives our customers a great upgrade path.

Robin writes –
With the 2Degrees SATA-SAN products we’re running a real SAN using raw ethernet – multi-GbE or 10GbE – as the storage fabric instead of fibre channel. SATA-SAN storage sends SATA disk commands and data over Ethernet using raw ethernet packets at full wire speed i.e. >100MB/sec, maxing out at ~110MB/s per Gigabit connection. No IP is involved which is chatty and slow.

REPLY – this is confusing to me. You are using Tiger Technology MetaSAN or Charismac Fibre Jet as your interface (as per your website), but your connectivity is “raw ethernet” – is this aggrigated port ethernet, or 10Gig E ? The client edit computer has to have some way of plugging into your storage – how does it plug in ?

[answer] Let me say it another way. Our connectivity is Ethernet, running the lightweight and fast SATA-over-Ethernet protocol without IP. There are no limitations as we are not ‘aggregating’ ports, all ports are active all the time. The client computers just plug into a commodity Ethernet switch(es) which the storage is also connected to. Clients can even direct connect e.g. with a six GbE port storage unit you can direct connect six workstations for >100MB/sec each, great for editing workgroups with compressed HD formats.

By the way, we are not using MetaSAN or Commandsoft’s (not Charismac’s) FibreJet as our ‘interface’. Our website mentions these are part of our software stacks that we provide to meet our customer’s need for file-level or volume-level sharing on the SAN. The actual UIs are different depending on the software stack. If customers don’t have a need for sharing then they can access Raid sets or even JBOD drives from workstations as extra storage. It’s very flexible.

The SATA-over-Ethernet protocol used is a mature protocol which provides reliable and fast delivery using raw point-to-point ethernet transport. Device discovery is almost instant and plug-and-play without IP setup hassles or limitations.

REPLY – this is called AoE, correct ? again, when we plug the client workstation (FCP) into your “box”, is it a single Gig E cable, 2 Gig E cables, a CX4 10Gig cable ? Does it plug into a central switch ? Is the switch part of your product, that holds the drives ?

[answer] Any or All of the above, as all ports are active all of the time, so we can use one or two or six GbE ports/cables, or a 10GbE CX4 or 10GbE fiber connection, individually or all together. We use commodity Ethernet switches and design the best architecture for each client, which can be centralized or not depending on the application.

Robin writes –
We have 2x 1GbE ports on the SATA-SAN Dual GbE units and both of them can be used at the same time at wire speed to read and write from any raid set in the unit. So the Dual GbE SATA-SAN storage achieves >200MB/sec, maxing out at ~220MB/sec. With SATA-SAN 10GbE storage units we achieve >500MB/sec sustained throughput and ~800-900MB/sec out of the cache. That’s faster than 4Gb fibre channel…

REPLY – I was told by several people (and all could be wrong, and I certainly am no expert) that running a dual aggrigated etherenet port on the client workstation would not increase the bandwidth to the server computer that runs the storage. Does running AoE resolve this issue, giving the ability to get over 200mb/sec from dual Gig E interface ?

[answer] You’re right, they’re wrong. They are applying the usual rules of IP based Ethernet which do not apply to us. As stated before, we are not ‘link aggregating’. With our software it truly does make sense for us to run two GigE cables from each FCP workstation to double the bandwidth to >200Mb/s.

SATA-SAN is an exciting cost-effective alternative to fibre channel with all the benefits of a simpler multi-GbE or 10GbE infrastructure.

REPLY – existing solutions use multi Gig E using link aggrigation protocol in managed switches (with multi port ethernet cards) to obtain larger “pipes”, but there is still limited bandwidth using ethernet to the CLIENT workstation. Does your solution resolve this issue ?

[answer] Yes, it does resolve this issue. Please see last [answer].

Bob mentioned MetaLAN – this uses TCP/IP to provide gatewayed access over the LAN to a SAN, so this will only run around 50MB/sec at usual LAN speeds. MetaLAN is similar to running iSCSI which is also slow. We often supply MetaLAN to gateway into our SATA-SAN storage networks running MetaSAN allowing some users to access SAN data at LAN speeds.

REPLY – doesn’t 2degreesfrost specify MetaSAN as their user interface on their website ? If I am wrong, what is your user interface – is it propriatary (unique to your company) ?

[answer] MetaSAN is not our user interface but is part of one of our software stacks. MetaSAN (or FibreJet) will not work on its own with our SATA-SAN storage, we had to develop our own proprietary software which form the other layers of our software stacks that together deliver complete SAN software solutions. There are different UIs for the different software stacks.

Thanks for your interest and I trust these answers above are helpful to you. SATA-SAN is a disruptive technology so one does need to get one’s head around some new thinking.

Robin Frost
CTO
2ºFrost Data Solutions
http://www.2degreesfrost.com

“Seriously Cool Storage”

[Robin Frost]

Bob,

I apologize for not answering this new post earlier, but I have been working on a CTO-level project and am not ‘always on the Cow’.

The ‘tough questions’ you say you asked were by posting somewhere on the Cow rather than emailing or calling us. They are not tough, but easy questions to answer and I will address these here in the forums shortly.

We pride ourselves on a quick response to customer inquiries by email or phone, neither of which you appear to have tried. There is also a customer inquiry form on our website that you are welcome to use and receive a quick response.

As an example, we received an inquiry from a previous poster on this thread and we responded to him within a couple of hours with a call and several Info PDFs. He managed to contact us…

Regarding PCMall, they recently updated their system and the link to our landing page is temporarily broken. But we are still there – just search under “SATA-SAN” or “2Degrees Frost” and you will find a long list of example SKUs. Their pricing is somewhat high compared to our current pricing because they have not yet updated their website.

All the SATA-SAN storage systems are BTO and available directly from us or via PC/Mac Mall on application.

Thanks for your interest and please feel free to call or email WalterZ regarding any questions you may have.

Robin Frost
CTO
2ºFrost Data Solutions
http://www.2degreesfrost.com

“Seriously Cool Storage”

[Robin Frost]

[rprice] “IS anyone using the Coraid, SmallTree or similar AoE protocol storage array with one or more FCP stations? Using a dedicated Jumboframe GigE network with the array, will that be enough bandwidth to write DVCPro 50? Right now just considering as a NAS device for storage and archive but would consider MetaSAN to do simultaneous read/write.”

Hi Rick, The answer is YES to both of your questions. We have Users AND bandwidth 🙂 (now up to 10Gbit !).

2Degrees Frost (www.2degreesfrost.com) are Coraid’s strategic partner bringing AoE-based storage to the Mac as SATA-SAN solution-level products – a complete, cost-effective SAN solution featuring our software, Coraid’s AoE storage components and SAN software such as MetaSAN or FibreJet fully integrated and supported for FCP editing.

If you or other forum members have any questions let us know on the forum (or call) and we’ll be happy to answer them.

-Robin (2Degrees Frost Data Solutions)