1. Storage Interoperability: Fact vs. Fiction Steve Duplessie Founder/Sr. Analyst The Enterprise Storage Group, Inc.

2. Why Should You Care? Interoperability Promotes staff efficiencies Cross pollination of talent

3. Why Should You Care? Interoperability Promotes scale Only way to get to an automated, policy based storage infrastructure

4. Interoperability Enables best practices in adherence with established business rules

5. Interoperability Supports consolidation Improves utilization rates Enables long term planning

6. Why Should You Care? Interoperability Is The Key To Client Choice The 3 Areas Of Concern Physical Management Usage

7. Interoperability Is The Key To Choice The Bottom Line It will never happen without STANDARDS You may get some things, but never utopia until standards are derived and adhered too. Purpose-built solutions are still OK

8. Standards Make The World Go Round Interoperability Is The Key To Client Choice STANDARDS: Ethernet –Physical – Yes –Management – Yes (SNMP) –Usage – Yes (CIFS/NFS) »iSCSI? It will be!

9. Interoperability Is The Key To Client Choice STANDARDS: INFINIBAND (Next Year) Physical – Yes Management – Yes (but rudimentary) Usage – Yes (Server Side)

10. Who Needs Em? NON-STANDARDS: FIBRE CHANNEL Physical –Devices work –HBA’s work –Switches work –Just Not Together! –Different Code revs = BOOM! –Still No Inter-Switch Zoning

11. A Case Study In How Not To Go To Market NON-STANDARDS: FIBRE CHANNEL –Management »Device management only, no standards mean no universal frameworks. »All subsystem vendors use their own management techniques. »Virtualization is critical enabler here

12. The Only Thing That Matters USAGE Storage Array based applications don’t/won’t interoperate. Until they do (they won’t), the only way to gain true interoperability is via Virtualization – external to the arrays. Until we can do SRDF type functions from an EMC Symm to a Dell array, we have no real interoperability.

13. Virtualization IS the Key Won’t be a standard for a long time, but will enable physical, management, and usage interoperability. Get in the game – this play eliminates the wait time for other standards.

14. Pick A Virtualization Play And Start VIRTUALIZATION Will ultimately shake out as a hybrid – running components on the host, switches, and devices. Will enable you to use existing assets in a cohesive storage infrastructure. Enables true choices – anything to anything connectivity and usage.

15. Demand Standard Interfaces From Vendors Interoperability Is The Key To Client Choice Standards Belong On the Interface Vendors should keep proprietary as their back end special sauce. Who cares how an Ethernet switch works, as long as it does?

16. Until We Reach Nirvana Purpose Built Storage Certain problems mean forget standards – if you find something specifically designed to solve a specific problem, use it.