budget. With benefits like that, people are willing to look at new technology.


Q The more so, as many end users are still to understand what benefits Ethernet storage offers?


AKB: Ethernet SAN and the ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) protocol grew up quietly in the Linux market, which is why


mainstream data center buyers hadn’t heard of it. I was a vice president at one of the big storage companies, and I’d never heard of it. Now, with virtualization and cloud architectures becoming the dominant themes in computing, and 10 Gb Ethernet prices dropping below $500/port, the timing is right for a disruptive technology with proven benefits. We’ll be working hard in 2011 to accelerate the market education around Ethernet SAN.


Q When do you anticipate that Ethernet storage will gain ‘critical mass’?


AKB: We are working hard on that. Coraid has now raised $35 million in funding from top tier investors, we nearly


tripled sales in 2010, and we’re aggressively partnering with top networking and virtualization players to drive adoption. We’ve now got over 1,300 customers, including Fortune 100 enterprises, cloud providers, and major government agencies worldwide. We deployed two petabytes of storage for the U.S. Department of Defense, at less than one-tenth the price of their previous vendor, and the technology was up and running within 9 hours. It’s always hard to say, but it feels like we’re hitting critical mass with Ethernet SAN in the next 12 months.


Q And what will cause this?


AKB: The storage market has traditionally been very conservative, but the pain points are pretty intense right now, and the combination of slow economic growth with rapid data growth is forcing people to consider alternatives. As far as technology trends, the move from Fibre Channel to Ethernet and the move to scale-out cloud architectures and virtualization are all inflection points that challenge the storage status quo. Customers naturally move to solutions that are simpler to use, cost less and provide higher performance, and Ethernet SAN is a natural.


Q What are the benefits of storage networks based on ATA over Ethernet when compared to FC and iSCSI Ethernet storage solutions?


AKB: FC, FCoE and iSCSI SAN solutions have earned a reputation as rigid, complex and expensive. Ethernet SAN


solutions based on ATA over Ethernet (AoE) eliminate most of the complex layers of storage, like multi-pathing, zoning, and controller load management.


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The main benefits and customer value proposition include:


 Faster performance than Fibre Channel, at one-fifth the price  Massive scale-out performance, with 1800+ MB/sec per shelf performance


 Enterprise-class storage starting at less than $600/TB  Ethernet SAN eliminates complexity and bottlenecks of legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI, with arrays that can be configured in under 60 seconds


 Provides an ideal platform for scale-out and cloud architectures


Q And are there any areas where AoE does not compete with the other two Ethernet ‘flavours’?


AKB: With new support for SATA/SAS/SSD drives, 10 Gb Ethernet, and advanced data protection, Ethernet SAN


delivers consistent price-performance and simplicity benefits over FCoE and iSCSI. In cases where we’re still building out specific feature sets for given environments, we’ll often rely on software features available at the file system or hypervisor layer.


Q In more detail, what Ethernet storage products and solutions is Coraid offering right now?


AKB: CORAID EtherDrive products include: EtherDrive SR-Series Storage Arrays


 Up to 48 TB capacity, 2 x 1 Gb Ethernet, SATA drives, 200+ MB/sec


 Entry-level high performance Ethernet SAN, starting at <$500/TB


EtherDrive SRX-Series Storage Arrays  Up to 72 TB capacity, 6 x 1 Gb Ethernet or 2 x 10 Gb


Ethernet, SATA/SAS/SSD drives, 1800+ MB/sec High performance Ethernet SAN, starting at <$600/TB


 Ideal for primary storage, high performance virtual computing, video


EtherDrive VSX-Series Appliances


 NSPOF mirroring, storage virtualization, snapshots, clones, replication


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