Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

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.