Adaptec, Inc. is a leader in the manufacture and sale of hardware and software that allow data transfer between computers. The company has a strong share of the market for small computer system interface devices, known as SCSI (pronounced 'scuzzy'). These interfaces allow data to move quickly between different computer types and allow computers to communicate with peripheral devices such as printers, scanners, disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives and others. Adaptec also manufactures other technology in the general field of data movement, including advanced networking equipment and software. The firm maintains headquarters in Silicon Valley, in the town of Milpitas, California, with regional offices in Japan and Belgium. A Miami, Florida office oversees Adaptec's business in Latin America. Adaptec does not own its own manufacturing facilities, but subcontracts through vendors in Taiwan, Singapore, and elsewhere. Some of Adaptec's customers include major computer manufacturers such as IBM, Dell, Apple, and Compaq.
Beginnings in the 1980s
Adaptec was the brainchild of Laurence Boucher. Boucher had been a computer engineer at a company called Shugart Associates and at leading computer maker IBM. In 1981, at the age of 37, he left IBM to start his own company. As small computers began to get more powerful, Boucher saw a need for technology that would let them swap data with mainframe computers and other devices more quickly. The problem was known as the input/output bottleneck: very fast computers could not work to capacity if they could not get their data--from disk drives, networks, or whatever--at an acceptable speed. Eric J. Savitz, in a profile of Adaptec in the December 3, 1990 issue of Barron's, described the input/output bottleneck aptly as driving a sports car through Manhattan at rush hour: 'Theoretically, you might be able to go 140 miles per hour, but practically, you're lucky if you reach 10 miles per hour.' Boucher's company developed semiconductor chips, boards, and software that eliminated rush hour. Adaptec's technology made quick, flexible communication links between computers and their so-called peripheral devices, meaning printers, exterior drives, and other components that might be linked up to the computer.
Boucher had found a niche for a viable product, and Adaptec grew quickly. After only two years, the company had sales of more than $6 million. Management, sales, and distribution were run out of headquarters in Milpitas, California, while manufacturing and assembly of Adaptec's semiconductor chips and circuit boards were subcontracted out to factories in Singapore. The company ballooned, finding many customers among other start-up computer companies who appreciated Adaptec's cutting-edge technology. Yet this initial spurt of growth was not well managed; soon, Adaptec ran into serious financial problems. As the company was just establishing its reputation, it took all the customers it could get to achieve enough sales volume to keep going. As a result, Adaptec ended up pooling most of its sales among three companies. As these were all new ventures, and not particularly stable, this was not a wise strategy. During one disastrous quarter of 1984, all three of the companies that represented Adaptec's biggest customers ran into difficulties and decided to cancel their orders. Losing these three customers meant fully half of Adaptec's sales went down the drain. When things had been going well, the company had been casually managed, and it did not seem to matter. But in this crisis, it was clear that Adaptec needed to adopt some basic controls. The company had not been verifying shipments against purchase orders, and it was receiving parts it did not want and running short on essentials. The company had been running without regular production forecasts, so it was virtually impossible to clarify what parts were needed anyway. Finances were out of order, and the company was not getting paid promptly by its customers. It operated without credit checks or credit limits on customers. This sloppiness on Adaptec's part inadvertently put the company in the position of lending money to its clients&mdash™her small companies happy for the break. Early in 1984, Adaptec found itself with inventory on hand worth more than its entire sales for the 1983 fiscal year, and the firm's cash balance dwindled to only $131,000.
The company had to act quickly to avoid going under. Fortunately, Boucher recently had hired several top executives with experience working at older, established computer firms. A marketing vice-president and sales president came to Adaptec from Intel, and Boucher also hired a chief financial officer who had previously worked at an analytical instrument manufacturer in San Jose, Finnegan Corp. Whereas Boucher was an engineer with keen insight into computer technology, these managers had more business background. They worked literally day and night to turn the company around, first of all by selling off inventory. During the business day, Adaptec sold its excess parts to other area companies, and in the evening, managers attended meetings of local electronics clubs to sell off unneeded controller boards. The company leased out unused testing equipment and extracted more time to pay from its creditors. Because Adaptec did not own its own factories and manufacturing equipment, it had relatively low overhead. It managed to raise enough cash to keep going, without laying off staff. The company began to operate in a more traditional and businesslike manner. It initiated regularly scheduled executive staff meetings to fine-tune production forecasts and began running credit checks on customers and limiting customer credit. It also sought out new customers, so that it did not sell exclusively to young and high-risk companies. Adaptec soon linked up with two national electronics distributors and began selling as well to Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and other firmly entrenched computer industry leaders.
Because of Adaptec's quick action, the 1984 crisis passed and the company was left in sound shape. In 1986 the company went public, selling its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange. By that time, Adaptec had a customer base of more than 300 companies, and no single customer made up more than ten percent of its sales. With a more coherent business plan, growth was manageable, and the company did extremely well. Sales for fiscal 1986 rose almost 80 percent compared with the year before, reaching close to $60 million. Profits also increased significantly, more than doubling. In its crisis year, Adaptec's inventory turned over less than once, but by fiscal 1986 inventory was turning over 6.8 times a year, almost twice the industry average. The company was thinking ahead, too, spending about nine percent of its sales on research and development and bringing out scores of new products. After the company went public, founder Boucher left. He went to work starting a new company, Auspex Systems. A former IBM colleague, John G. Adler, took over the chief executive position at Adaptec.
SCSI Sales in the Late 1980s
Adaptec manufactured a wide array of microchips and subsystems that allowed computers to communicate with peripherals. One development in the late 1980s was a card that could be inserted into laser printers both to increase speed and lower costs. Adaptec also made controllers for high-capacity disk drives. Among its products, the most important by 1990 was the SCSI. Sales of SCSI and SCSI-related devices made up 70 percent of Adaptec's sales by 1990. SCSI had become more important as time passed. Originally, founder Boucher had seen the need for a device that allowed data to bypass the input/output bottleneck, the traffic jam described previously. Yet in the early 1980s, relatively few computers were powerful enough to run into this problem. But as personal computers grew more powerful, Adaptec's data flow controllers became more essential. In 1986 Apple adopted the SCSI for all of its Macintosh model computers. Several years later, IBM-compatible models were using it, and by 1989, IBM itself had made SCSI standard. Adaptec worked both ends of the market, making the adapter boards that went into computers using SCSI and the so-called protocol chips inserted into the peripheral devices that would then communicate with the host computer via SCSI. By 1990, the company had divided its manufacturing operations into three main areas. The first was systems products, which were the hard-disk controllers, local area network adapter boards, software, and SCSI host adapter boards required by computer manufacturers. The second manufacturing area was peripheral products, which meant the adapters and controller boards used by makers of equipment that networked with computers. Among the company's most prominent products in this area were its printer controller boards and hard disk controller chips. Adaptec's third division was for development products, which were components used by makers of both computers and peripherals in testing and developing new products before they went on the market. The biggest and fastest growing of these three product areas was peripherals. It made laser printer boards for the Japanese manufacturers Canon and C. Itoh, and their new printers were considered astonishingly fast. At a trade show in 1990, the company demonstrated how the Japanese printers equipped with the Adaptec card could produce in 30 seconds a complex drawing that normally would have taken 30 minutes.
Changes in the Mid-1990s
Chairman John Adler stepped down in 1995 and left the chief executive position to Grant Saviers. A dozen years after its founding, Adaptec was an enviable company. It had a huge share of the market for its products, burgeoning sales, and a quite comfortable profit margin. Revenues for fiscal 1993 were more than $300 million, and net income for that year tripled from the year before, to $49 million. Its SCSI adapters were able to handle data from as many as 15 peripheral devices at once, allowing computer owners to hook up optical scanners, external hard drives, or multiple printers with great convenience. Its products were in demand, and the company had been profitable quarter after quarter. Yet in the mid-1990s, the company realized its glow might not last, and it began to look ahead to new products.
Adaptec's laser printer card business had proved unsuccessful, and by 1994 the company was no longer pursuing it. Other manufacturers had tried to get in on the computer communications device market, coming up with new technology they hoped would be better and cheaper. Competitors had come up with other devices, known by impenetrable acronyms, including IDE/ATA and ATA Packet Interface. These were different ways of doing what the SCSI did. But the looming problem for Adaptec was making its SCSI products work with voice and video applications. By 1994, voice and video components made up a very small portion of the computer market, yet it seemed to be the wave of the future. SCSI products could move large amounts of data between computers and peripherals, but the data they handled was not exactly time dependent. For voice and video, all the information had to arrive synchronously or the sound and picture would be garbled. The company poured money into research and development, devoting as much as ten percent of revenues in the mid-1990s to developing new products, particularly adaptations for voice and video.
The company also moved to shore up its product line by making acquisitions. In 1995 Adaptec acquired Power I/O, a small company founded by computer entrepreneur Robert Stephens. In 1996 Adaptec bought Cogent Data Technologies, Inc. in a transaction valued at $68 million. Cogent Data was a privately held company based in Friday Harbor, Washington, and it made a kind of adapter device known as Fast Ethernet. This was a new computer networking technology that seemed to be growing quickly. Acquiring the small company gave Adaptec entry into Fast Ethernet's markets more quickly than if it had tried to develop its own products. Two years later Adaptec tried to make another acquisition, but soon scrapped the plan. In February 1998, Adaptec offered to pay $775 million for Symbios Logic Inc., a Hyundai Electronics subsidiary based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Symbios made data storage equipment, and its 1997 sales were more than $600 million. However, a review of the merger by the Federal Trade Commission raised antitrust issues, and Adaptec backed out of the deal.
Trouble in the Late 1990s
This was a bad time for Adaptec. By 1997, the market for personal computers had slowed, and with it Adaptec's sales sank. A few years earlier, Adaptec's SCSI technology had found a place in approximately 12 percent of desktop computers. In 1997 that percentage was somewhere in the single digits. Premium chip maker Intel had incorporated technology similar to SCSI on its standard product, making Adaptec's device obsolete on Intel-powered machines. Profits slowed at Adaptec, and sales grew for fiscal 1998 only eight percent, far below the stellar rates of years earlier. The company's stock began to fall. In late 1997 it had been trading at more than $50. It bottomed out in 1998 at $8. In the summer of 1998, Adaptec's chief financial officer resigned, and shortly after, the treasurer left. When it was unable to carry through its acquisition of Symbios, the company was at a loss for a new direction, and this led to turmoil. Finally, in August 1998 Chairman and Chief Executive Grant Saviers quit. Apparently, his plan for the company was less conservative than the board wanted, and he left. The position was filled temporarily by Adaptec's founder, Laurence Boucher. Boucher had launched his third company by that time, but he came back to straighten things out at Adaptec. He announced that the company would shore up its core business, which was still the ailing SCSI. Almost immediately the firm announced layoffs in its storage systems division, and in November it sold its Peripheral Technology Solutions division to STMicroelectronics. This division made controllers for disk drives. Formerly, it had contributed as much as 25 percent of Adaptec's revenues, but that figure had fallen to about ten percent. The transaction brought Adaptec $73 million. Adaptec got out of its satellite networking business, its fibre channel business, its high-end peripheral technology business, and its external storage business. The company also cut back the amount of money it was spending on research and development.
By January 1999 the company was able to announce better than expected profits for the preceding quarter. Its quick action to cut costs and sever unprofitable product lines had shown results and demand rose again for some of its core hardware and software. Boucher continued to lead the company, while Adaptec found a new president in Robert Stephens, who had been chief operating officer since 1995.
Almost a year later, the company seemed to be returning to financial health. As the stock market continued to prosper, Adaptec's stock recovered somewhat. The company had promising new products in its so-called RAID (redundant arrays of independent disks) technology. This amalgam of hardware, software, and SCSI products was able to turn a group of disk drives into a powerful data storage unit. Adaptec also had turned itself into the leading supplier of software that let people record compact disks at home. As music from the Internet seemed to be a rapidly growing niche, the company was well positioned to take advantage of this growth. Though sales for fiscal 1999 were more than 30 percent lower than the year previous, there were signs that the company was doing better, particularly with strong fourth quarter sales and net income.
Principal Subsidiaries: Adaptec Mfg. (S) Pte. Ltd. (Singapore); Adaptec Gmbh (Germany); Adaptec Europe S.A. (Belgium); Adaptec Japan Ltd.
Principal Competitors: Hewlett-Packard; Digi International; Oak Technology.
The pervasive global economy is driving the continued and exponential growth of enterprise data. The demand for high-speed access to data, generated by e-commerce, email, various enterprise productivity applications, as well as web serving and digitized media and information - is insatiable at all levels of the enterprise. Companies are under tremendous pressure to store, protect, distribute, and derive value from all that data. Thus, assessing and understanding the Information Value Chain - storing the right data on the right storage - distributed throughout an enterprise has become one of the most pressing issues facing Chief Information Officers today.
Storage Today top of page
Today's storage technology market offers two broad options for storing data: direct attached storage (DAS) and networked storage, which consists of storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS).
While DAS has dominated the storage market in the past, according to IDC, 60 percent of external disk storage being purchased today is networked storage, and analysts expect it to grow significantly over the next few years. Networked storage architectures, separating servers from their storage, offer flexible, scalable capacities and offload some of the provisioning and management tasks from the server. To understand the ongoing shift from DAS to networked storage, it is necessary to first discuss the different architectures in more detail.
Direct Attached Storage top of page
In its simplest form, direct attached storage (DAS) consists of a disk drive attached directly to a server. Data is transferred using Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) commands, the most common means of I/O communication between a computer and a hard drive. In many implementations requiring large amounts of storage, the storage is a shelf of disks, or a disk subsystem.
All applications are insulated from dealing directly with the disk drives. The Server's operating system incurs the overhead of the entire flow and management disk I/O. It provides the physical disk translation through its local file system and logical volume management through a volume manager.
DAS works well in environments with a limited number of servers. However, if there are dozens of servers and significant data growth, the situation rapidly becomes unmanageable. The storage for each server has to be managed separately and can't be easily shared. Scalability is limited, and the overall efficiency of the DAS resource tends to be diminished. With the varied data management needs of today's business functions, enterprises have recognized the need to take a more cost-effective, flexible, and scalable networked storage approach for their valuable high-volume information.
two typical DAS configurations
Storage Area Networks top of page
In a storage area network (SAN), a number of servers have access to a pool of storage resources. Each server utilizes a portion of the storage yet does not know about the other server's data, so the servers share the storage and not the data. The servers are connected via host bus adapters (HBAs) to Fibre Channel switches, which in turn are connected to the Fibre Channel storage system(s). The servers and storage communicate via the Fibre Channel protocol suite, which allows SCSI commands to be transmitted via serial connections. The Fibre Channel interface and protocol allow for high throughput, and are typically only used in the most elite and demanding performance applications. Component costs are high and complexity of maintenance can make SAN implementations an undesirable choice.
Typical SAN Configuration
Total Cost of Ownership
The total cost of ownership (TCO) for operating a Fibre Channel SAN, while lower than the DAS model, is still relatively high. Although SANs benefit from the efficiencies of centralized management (which reduces TCO), the deployment cost for Fibre Channel is high. In particular, a shortage of specialized operations staff has historically been a problem.
Complexity and SAN Islands
Another issue with SANs stems from Fibre Channel being a serial interconnect, not a true network. Fibre Channel has no built-in routing capabilities and has only rudimentary address management capabilities. Also, SANs are continually plagued by interoperability issues with multi-vendor deployments. While some interoperability issues have diminished, most SANs today are still single-vendor storage environments.
Network Attached Storage top of page
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a true, mature, networked storage solution based on IP and Ethernet that has longstanding maturity and robustness from decades of use in the networking world, and incorporates volume manager and file system capabilities into the storage device. In a NAS environment, the servers are connected to the storage by a standard Ethernet network. They use network file sharing protocols, like Network File System (NFS) for UNIX/Linux and Common Internet File System (CIFS) for Windows to store and transport files over the network. NAS devices share a common data store, separate application services from file services, and share files among all clients. Many companies have found NAS devices deliver the lowest TCO of any storage approach, and because they have lower capacities and lower performance, when compared with SAN storage, they have found their place in numerous locations around the edge of an enterprise network. More recently, however, the proliferation of Gigabit Ethernet and enterprise-capable NAS servers has greatly accelerated the deployment of NAS solutions, bringing them closer to the main-stream enterprise applications in data center environments, particularly when ease of use is important. NAS can be very useful for companies needing to share files. They are usually managed individually, though some companies like Snap Server do have unified management tools, and each NAS device on the network is accessed by a single IP address.
Typical Network attached Storage Configuration
The Need for IP Storage top of page
Networked storage is a mature and well-understood technology. Many analysts believe that the main issues slowing the transition from DAS solutions to networked storage solutions are the cost and complexity associated with Fibre Channel. However, a rapidly emerging new technology promises to address both issues: Internet SCSI (iSCSI) or SCSI over IP.
iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet top of page
iSCSI is a new Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard protocol for encapsulating SCSI commands into TCP/IP packets and enabling block data transport over IP networks. iSCSI can be used to build SANs (termed: IP SANs) using a standard Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. A standard Gigabit Ethernet port on a server or switch can now connect to both block and file storage resources over Ethernet. High-level management activities-such as device access, authentication, device information, and configuration are managed using standard applications or tools. For this reason, the deployment of robust, interoperable iSCSI solutions is occurring rapidly.
Performance
First-generation iSCSI performance is well suited for the workgroup or departmental storage requirements of medium- and large-size businesses. The availability of TCP/IP engines that increase access speed by offloading network protocols further improves the performance of iSCSI at 1 Gigabit Ethernet, and will allow vendors to further scale performance to 10 Giga-bit Ethernet iSCSI in the near future.
NAS Configuration for iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet
How it Works
iSCSI communications over an existing Ethernet connection requires a host-side "Initiator" and a "Target" software driver in the NAS. The diagram above is essentially the same as in the previous NAS description in the fact that the host and NAS device are communicating over TCP/IP; but with the addition of the iSCSI Initiator software driver to the host configuration; and a Target driver to the NAS device. The interaction between the Initiator and Target mandates a server-client model, illustrated in Figure 5, where the Initiator and the Target communicate with each other using the SCSI command and data set encapsulated over TCP/IP. At the moment, there are very few iSCSI target devices; Snap Server is one of the first iSCSI implementations to provide iSCSI target support on all its GuardianOS v3-based servers.
Many companies are developing iSCSI Initiators. Some of the first releases of iSCSI Initiators have come from Microsoft, Cisco, Linux, and UNH (University of New Hampshire). However, most have yet to release iSCSI Target drivers. Snap Server, the volume leader in NAS solutions, is one of the first that has embedded iSCSI target support in its Snap Servers, providing true concurrent block and file support in single Snap Server.
iSCSI Data transfer flow
Benefits of iSCSI
By combining SCSI, Ethernet, and TCP/IP, Gigabit iSCSI delivers these key advantages:
* Builds on stable and familiar standards since Ethernet protocol and the component technologies based on Ethernet are prevalent in the enterprise environment
* Creates a SAN with a reduced TCO-installation and ongoing maintenance costs are low
* Provides a high degree of interoperability reduces disparate networks and cabling, and uses regular Ethernet switches instead of special Fibre Channel switches
* Delivers a solution with no practical distance limitations since IP datagrams can travel over the global IP network
File and Block Separation in the Enterprise top of page
Since some enterprise applications are architected to view storage as a local, direct-attached disk (block data,) NAS has not been suitable for those applications. In a typical corporate IT environment, databases require access via block access. Conversely, users require access via CIFS or NFS file services. Today, this means that a different storage device must be deployed for each access topology. Applications that best utilize SAN storage to support block-based data and the applications that best utilize NAS storage for file-based data are forcing enterprises to use disparate dedicated storage devices. Until now.
Snap Server - Block and File Unification top of page
The industry is starting to respond to this challenge with storage systems that have unified both block and file capabilities and benefit from both protocols. Snap Servers running the GuardianOS v3 are our first generation of products supporting both block and file access in a single server with simple, easy-to-use provisioning.
One of the true benefits of IP-based storage is that, for the first time, CIFS/NFS/iSCSI can travel down the existing network infrastructure - using the Gigabit network and leveraging common switches and wiring. But converging at the wire doesn't solve the provisioning problem. One of the true difficulties with storage has always been its provisioning to meet both current needs and future growth. Storage used to be really expensive, so over-allocating storage was undesirable. Though the release of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives has brought the cost of storage down, the major cost component of provisioning is an intangible one, as servers deployed for different applications and protocols must also be reprovisioned individually. Traditionally, storage reprovisioning has been performed by using capacity expansion tools. However, today's disk drives are large, resulting in long rebuild times. Unloading/loading of the data on a RAID set, in order to expand it, is too time consuming and tedious for many environments. So, the same problems apply. Converging protocols on the wire and still utilizing individual systems for handling different protocols means that enterprises are doubling up the storage devices on the network, which makes storage resource management more of an issue.
Simple, On-the-fly Provisioning
Snap Server eases the provisioning problem by creating virtual iSCSI disk devices, supported by our standard volume management. Essentially, iSCSI disks reside on a volume in the Snap Server, just like files. Both block and data files are converged in the Snap Server. The GuardianOS with Instant Capacity Expansion (I.C.E.) capability provides an easy user interface for managing real-time expansion of any volume on the Snap Server. An administrator can easily build a new RAID set and group it with an existing RAID set to form single group. This added capacity then becomes instantly available for expansion for any volume in the group.
Snap Server Advantage
With Snap Servers there is a single device on the network for both block and file data rather than two-one device dedicated to block and one to file.
Reprovisioning is done quickly and without compromising I/O performance. The UI makes it simple to create new file shares, add another iSCSI disk, resize iSCSI disks, and perform other provisioning tasks with point-and-click ease. Resizing is done instantly and without the need to unload/load anything. Snap Servers can be re-tasked at anytime. IT managers can purchase a Snap Server to meet their file-storage requirements today; and can completely change their mind and deploy it for block storage. Only the Snap Server can be re-tasked in an instant, without losing any data.
Benefits of Unified Block and File Storage
* Simplified management (i.e. same for NAS and IP SAN)
* iSCSI disks (FileDisks) can be backed up like any other disk attached to the server
* Provisioning problems are alleviated since FileDisks can be grown online
* FileDisks are all RAID protected against mechanical failures
Who Can Use It?
iSCSI or IP SANs with unified block and file will initially be most attractive to organizations with the following environments:
* Distributed data environments
* Significant data growth over the past five years
* Proliferation of Intel® architecture servers in divisional, departmental, and workgroup environments
* Business requirements to consolidate data storage among small servers and their management, and to improve operational efficiency, data availability, and storage resource management
* Budget and staffing limitations which preclude a Fibre Channel SAN deployment
* Heavy use of critical business applications that require block storage, and until now, had to be stored on a separate server, including:
o Microsoft Exchange messaging solutions
o SharePoint portals
o GreatPlains financial
o Customer relationship management (CRM)
o Small to medium databases
o Shadow copy vaulting
o Practically any nearline storage application
iSCSI Deployment Scenario
iSCSI Deployment Examples top of page
Server proliferation is increasing the complexity and expense of storage management in many distributed enterprise environments, particularly for applications experiencing significant data growth. The configuration in Figure 7 deploys centralized network storage for the many server types and delivers significant savings in TCO for applications where a common storage pool is desired or where there is a need for a common block (iSCSI) and file (NFS/CFIS) storage pool. Snap Servers can be backed up with the embedded BakBone NetVault software or backup agents for VERITAS, CA, and Legato. Optional Network Data Management Protocol support provides backup flexibility.
Conclusion top of page
Organizations with server proliferation and data growth problems in departmental and workgroup data centers will be the first to benefit from the introduction of IP storage and iSCSI, as they replace DAS and accelerate the transition to more cost-effective and flexible networked storage solutions. As the technology matures and performance increases, iSCSI-based storage solutions will gradually expand to displace DAS in high-end data centers and mission-critical environments, making iSCSI-based IP SANs ubiquitous.
CHALLENGE
Incompatible supply chain processes due to rapid growth through acquisitions. Immediate need was a rapid supply chain assessment to identify core problem areas and specific remedial actions that would create significant process improvements (not just incremental gains).
WHY ABEAM?
Reputation for excellence in supply chain consulting, including a highly successful prior engagement with U.S.-based Dell Computer.
SOLUTION
ABeam analyzed Adaptec's supply chain, resulting in a transformation roadmap that estimated return on investment for:
* Improving Adaptec's liquidity position (inventory and cash-to-cash conversion cycle)
* Establishing build-to-order capabilities to keep pace with changing market demands
* Transforming supply chain demand with best practices for supply matching and inventory velocity
* Focusing the company on execution through metrics, performance monitoring and accountability standards
REAL BENEFITS
ABeam identified seven supply chain improvements that could begin producing results within one quarter, leading to a minimum ROI over three years of $23.5 million. Adaptec executive management, with first-hand exposure to ABeam's expertise, commissioned a joint partnership with ABeam to implement those recommendations, using a formal gain sharing program that aligns ABeam-driven project success with Adaptec's success. Early results include:
* Reduced inventory stocking levels
* Increased inventory turnover
* Improved forecasting accuracy and controls
* Seamless integration of ABeam consultants with Adaptec staff to create a homogeneous transformation team focused on Adaptec's success
Adaptec, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADPT), HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) will team to debut the Serial Attached SCSI interface working with both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives June 18-20 at CeBIT America in New York City.
Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA compatibility will give organizations a new level of flexibility in configuring disk storage for cost and performance in direct-attached and networked storage deployments. The joint demonstration in the SAN Exchange Pavilion, booth 2419, at the Jacob K. Javits Center will highlight the Serial Attached SCSI interface's support for both Serial Attached SCSI drives and Serial ATA drives. Serial Attached SCSI also enables the design of smaller form factor disk drives for high-density computing environments.
"Serial Attached SCSI and small form factor enterprise-class drives will provide scalable speed, decreased power consumption and increased integration flexibility for diverse data needs in a variety of storage system architectures," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner Dataquest.
Serial Attached SCSI - Supporting Transactional and Reference Data
By supporting both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives, the Serial Attached SCSI interconnect will let organizations easily deploy and manage disk storage in servers, external storage appliances and networked storage solutions based on the performance and capacity requirements of each data type, such as:
* Reference data, consisting of infrequently accessed or archived information including electronic documents, presentations and graphics used in word processing, email, graphics, CAD/CAM, medical diagnostic and other applications; and
* Transactional data, typically high-demand information frequently and concurrently accessed by multiple users. This includes data from e-commerce, credit card and bank transactions, customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SRM), multimedia and other bandwidth-intensive enterprise applications.
New Flexibility For Deploying and Managing Storage
Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drive compatibility will offer a number of key benefits to system builders, integrators and end users:
* End users will enjoy a new level of price/performance flexibility. Serial ATA drives will provide cost-effective capacity for reference data, while Serial Attached SCSI drives will deliver the highest performance, reliability and software management compatibility for transactional data. The ability to upgrade from Serial ATA to Serial Attached SCSI drives without having to buy a new system will simplify the purchasing decision, future-proof system server investments and reduce total cost of ownership.
* System builders will be able to leverage the universal Serial Attached SCSI interconnect to deploy common backplanes, connectors and cabling. Upgrading from Serial ATA to Serial Attached SCSI will be as simple as replacing the disk drives. Other cost-saving benefits of compatibility include simpler new-product validation and inventory management.
* VARs and system integrators will be able to standardize on a single interface, allowing them to easily configure custom systems by simply installing the appropriate disk drive type.
Serial Attached SCSI Technical Capabilities
Serial Attached SCSI solutions also will feature:
* Data transfer rates of 3 gigabits/second with a roadmap to 12 gigabits/second (1,200 megabytes/second) to deliver the highest levels of system performance for bandwidth-intensive applications such as mainline storage, video editing, and streaming video and audio in direct-attached, networked-attached and networked storage environments.
* Dual porting for improved redundancy to enable the design of high-availability systems.
* Expander hardware to enable highly flexible and scalable storage configurations of more than 16,000 mixed Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives.
* Thinner cables and smaller connectors than traditional parallel technologies, enabling better chassis airflow and cooling, simpler cable routing and design of smaller form factor hard drives for high-density computing.
Industry Leaders Team to Showcase Serial Attached SCSI at CeBIT
"Adaptec, HP and Seagate are working to give customers greater disk drive flexibility in the enterprise," said Jeff Jenkins, acting vice president, Server Storage and Infrastructure, HP Industry Standard Servers. "Serial Attached SCSI offers customers exceptional choice on their price-performance requirements, allowing server and storage customers to choose the technology that fits their specific needs - Serial Attached SCSI for performance and reliability or Serial ATA for cost-effective bulk storage capacity."
"Serial Attached SCSI will combine logical SCSI compatibility with new levels of performance, scalability and data availability to meet organizations' growing storage needs and help future-proof their storage investments," said Gary Gentry, Seagate Technology vice president, Business Development and Planning. "Adaptec, HP and Seagate Technology are pleased to be highlighting Serial Attached SCSI interconnect as the ideal choice for both Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI disk storage deployments in the enterprise."
"Adaptec is pleased to be extending its longstanding product development and engineering relationships with HP and Seagate to develop Serial Attached SCSI solutions and drive early adoption," said Ahmet Houssein, vice president and general manager of Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. "Our joint demonstration of Serial Attached SCSI/Serial ATA compatibility at CeBIT is a significant milestone in these efforts. The ability to plug both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives into the same system will give IT managers, system integrators and original equipment manufacturers unprecedented disk storage flexibility."
Beginnings in the 1980s
Adaptec was the brainchild of Laurence Boucher. Boucher had been a computer engineer at a company called Shugart Associates and at leading computer maker IBM. In 1981, at the age of 37, he left IBM to start his own company. As small computers began to get more powerful, Boucher saw a need for technology that would let them swap data with mainframe computers and other devices more quickly. The problem was known as the input/output bottleneck: very fast computers could not work to capacity if they could not get their data--from disk drives, networks, or whatever--at an acceptable speed. Eric J. Savitz, in a profile of Adaptec in the December 3, 1990 issue of Barron's, described the input/output bottleneck aptly as driving a sports car through Manhattan at rush hour: 'Theoretically, you might be able to go 140 miles per hour, but practically, you're lucky if you reach 10 miles per hour.' Boucher's company developed semiconductor chips, boards, and software that eliminated rush hour. Adaptec's technology made quick, flexible communication links between computers and their so-called peripheral devices, meaning printers, exterior drives, and other components that might be linked up to the computer.
Boucher had found a niche for a viable product, and Adaptec grew quickly. After only two years, the company had sales of more than $6 million. Management, sales, and distribution were run out of headquarters in Milpitas, California, while manufacturing and assembly of Adaptec's semiconductor chips and circuit boards were subcontracted out to factories in Singapore. The company ballooned, finding many customers among other start-up computer companies who appreciated Adaptec's cutting-edge technology. Yet this initial spurt of growth was not well managed; soon, Adaptec ran into serious financial problems. As the company was just establishing its reputation, it took all the customers it could get to achieve enough sales volume to keep going. As a result, Adaptec ended up pooling most of its sales among three companies. As these were all new ventures, and not particularly stable, this was not a wise strategy. During one disastrous quarter of 1984, all three of the companies that represented Adaptec's biggest customers ran into difficulties and decided to cancel their orders. Losing these three customers meant fully half of Adaptec's sales went down the drain. When things had been going well, the company had been casually managed, and it did not seem to matter. But in this crisis, it was clear that Adaptec needed to adopt some basic controls. The company had not been verifying shipments against purchase orders, and it was receiving parts it did not want and running short on essentials. The company had been running without regular production forecasts, so it was virtually impossible to clarify what parts were needed anyway. Finances were out of order, and the company was not getting paid promptly by its customers. It operated without credit checks or credit limits on customers. This sloppiness on Adaptec's part inadvertently put the company in the position of lending money to its clients&mdash™her small companies happy for the break. Early in 1984, Adaptec found itself with inventory on hand worth more than its entire sales for the 1983 fiscal year, and the firm's cash balance dwindled to only $131,000.
The company had to act quickly to avoid going under. Fortunately, Boucher recently had hired several top executives with experience working at older, established computer firms. A marketing vice-president and sales president came to Adaptec from Intel, and Boucher also hired a chief financial officer who had previously worked at an analytical instrument manufacturer in San Jose, Finnegan Corp. Whereas Boucher was an engineer with keen insight into computer technology, these managers had more business background. They worked literally day and night to turn the company around, first of all by selling off inventory. During the business day, Adaptec sold its excess parts to other area companies, and in the evening, managers attended meetings of local electronics clubs to sell off unneeded controller boards. The company leased out unused testing equipment and extracted more time to pay from its creditors. Because Adaptec did not own its own factories and manufacturing equipment, it had relatively low overhead. It managed to raise enough cash to keep going, without laying off staff. The company began to operate in a more traditional and businesslike manner. It initiated regularly scheduled executive staff meetings to fine-tune production forecasts and began running credit checks on customers and limiting customer credit. It also sought out new customers, so that it did not sell exclusively to young and high-risk companies. Adaptec soon linked up with two national electronics distributors and began selling as well to Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and other firmly entrenched computer industry leaders.
Because of Adaptec's quick action, the 1984 crisis passed and the company was left in sound shape. In 1986 the company went public, selling its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange. By that time, Adaptec had a customer base of more than 300 companies, and no single customer made up more than ten percent of its sales. With a more coherent business plan, growth was manageable, and the company did extremely well. Sales for fiscal 1986 rose almost 80 percent compared with the year before, reaching close to $60 million. Profits also increased significantly, more than doubling. In its crisis year, Adaptec's inventory turned over less than once, but by fiscal 1986 inventory was turning over 6.8 times a year, almost twice the industry average. The company was thinking ahead, too, spending about nine percent of its sales on research and development and bringing out scores of new products. After the company went public, founder Boucher left. He went to work starting a new company, Auspex Systems. A former IBM colleague, John G. Adler, took over the chief executive position at Adaptec.
SCSI Sales in the Late 1980s
Adaptec manufactured a wide array of microchips and subsystems that allowed computers to communicate with peripherals. One development in the late 1980s was a card that could be inserted into laser printers both to increase speed and lower costs. Adaptec also made controllers for high-capacity disk drives. Among its products, the most important by 1990 was the SCSI. Sales of SCSI and SCSI-related devices made up 70 percent of Adaptec's sales by 1990. SCSI had become more important as time passed. Originally, founder Boucher had seen the need for a device that allowed data to bypass the input/output bottleneck, the traffic jam described previously. Yet in the early 1980s, relatively few computers were powerful enough to run into this problem. But as personal computers grew more powerful, Adaptec's data flow controllers became more essential. In 1986 Apple adopted the SCSI for all of its Macintosh model computers. Several years later, IBM-compatible models were using it, and by 1989, IBM itself had made SCSI standard. Adaptec worked both ends of the market, making the adapter boards that went into computers using SCSI and the so-called protocol chips inserted into the peripheral devices that would then communicate with the host computer via SCSI. By 1990, the company had divided its manufacturing operations into three main areas. The first was systems products, which were the hard-disk controllers, local area network adapter boards, software, and SCSI host adapter boards required by computer manufacturers. The second manufacturing area was peripheral products, which meant the adapters and controller boards used by makers of equipment that networked with computers. Among the company's most prominent products in this area were its printer controller boards and hard disk controller chips. Adaptec's third division was for development products, which were components used by makers of both computers and peripherals in testing and developing new products before they went on the market. The biggest and fastest growing of these three product areas was peripherals. It made laser printer boards for the Japanese manufacturers Canon and C. Itoh, and their new printers were considered astonishingly fast. At a trade show in 1990, the company demonstrated how the Japanese printers equipped with the Adaptec card could produce in 30 seconds a complex drawing that normally would have taken 30 minutes.
Changes in the Mid-1990s
Chairman John Adler stepped down in 1995 and left the chief executive position to Grant Saviers. A dozen years after its founding, Adaptec was an enviable company. It had a huge share of the market for its products, burgeoning sales, and a quite comfortable profit margin. Revenues for fiscal 1993 were more than $300 million, and net income for that year tripled from the year before, to $49 million. Its SCSI adapters were able to handle data from as many as 15 peripheral devices at once, allowing computer owners to hook up optical scanners, external hard drives, or multiple printers with great convenience. Its products were in demand, and the company had been profitable quarter after quarter. Yet in the mid-1990s, the company realized its glow might not last, and it began to look ahead to new products.
Adaptec's laser printer card business had proved unsuccessful, and by 1994 the company was no longer pursuing it. Other manufacturers had tried to get in on the computer communications device market, coming up with new technology they hoped would be better and cheaper. Competitors had come up with other devices, known by impenetrable acronyms, including IDE/ATA and ATA Packet Interface. These were different ways of doing what the SCSI did. But the looming problem for Adaptec was making its SCSI products work with voice and video applications. By 1994, voice and video components made up a very small portion of the computer market, yet it seemed to be the wave of the future. SCSI products could move large amounts of data between computers and peripherals, but the data they handled was not exactly time dependent. For voice and video, all the information had to arrive synchronously or the sound and picture would be garbled. The company poured money into research and development, devoting as much as ten percent of revenues in the mid-1990s to developing new products, particularly adaptations for voice and video.
The company also moved to shore up its product line by making acquisitions. In 1995 Adaptec acquired Power I/O, a small company founded by computer entrepreneur Robert Stephens. In 1996 Adaptec bought Cogent Data Technologies, Inc. in a transaction valued at $68 million. Cogent Data was a privately held company based in Friday Harbor, Washington, and it made a kind of adapter device known as Fast Ethernet. This was a new computer networking technology that seemed to be growing quickly. Acquiring the small company gave Adaptec entry into Fast Ethernet's markets more quickly than if it had tried to develop its own products. Two years later Adaptec tried to make another acquisition, but soon scrapped the plan. In February 1998, Adaptec offered to pay $775 million for Symbios Logic Inc., a Hyundai Electronics subsidiary based in Fort Collins, Colorado. Symbios made data storage equipment, and its 1997 sales were more than $600 million. However, a review of the merger by the Federal Trade Commission raised antitrust issues, and Adaptec backed out of the deal.
Trouble in the Late 1990s
This was a bad time for Adaptec. By 1997, the market for personal computers had slowed, and with it Adaptec's sales sank. A few years earlier, Adaptec's SCSI technology had found a place in approximately 12 percent of desktop computers. In 1997 that percentage was somewhere in the single digits. Premium chip maker Intel had incorporated technology similar to SCSI on its standard product, making Adaptec's device obsolete on Intel-powered machines. Profits slowed at Adaptec, and sales grew for fiscal 1998 only eight percent, far below the stellar rates of years earlier. The company's stock began to fall. In late 1997 it had been trading at more than $50. It bottomed out in 1998 at $8. In the summer of 1998, Adaptec's chief financial officer resigned, and shortly after, the treasurer left. When it was unable to carry through its acquisition of Symbios, the company was at a loss for a new direction, and this led to turmoil. Finally, in August 1998 Chairman and Chief Executive Grant Saviers quit. Apparently, his plan for the company was less conservative than the board wanted, and he left. The position was filled temporarily by Adaptec's founder, Laurence Boucher. Boucher had launched his third company by that time, but he came back to straighten things out at Adaptec. He announced that the company would shore up its core business, which was still the ailing SCSI. Almost immediately the firm announced layoffs in its storage systems division, and in November it sold its Peripheral Technology Solutions division to STMicroelectronics. This division made controllers for disk drives. Formerly, it had contributed as much as 25 percent of Adaptec's revenues, but that figure had fallen to about ten percent. The transaction brought Adaptec $73 million. Adaptec got out of its satellite networking business, its fibre channel business, its high-end peripheral technology business, and its external storage business. The company also cut back the amount of money it was spending on research and development.
By January 1999 the company was able to announce better than expected profits for the preceding quarter. Its quick action to cut costs and sever unprofitable product lines had shown results and demand rose again for some of its core hardware and software. Boucher continued to lead the company, while Adaptec found a new president in Robert Stephens, who had been chief operating officer since 1995.
Almost a year later, the company seemed to be returning to financial health. As the stock market continued to prosper, Adaptec's stock recovered somewhat. The company had promising new products in its so-called RAID (redundant arrays of independent disks) technology. This amalgam of hardware, software, and SCSI products was able to turn a group of disk drives into a powerful data storage unit. Adaptec also had turned itself into the leading supplier of software that let people record compact disks at home. As music from the Internet seemed to be a rapidly growing niche, the company was well positioned to take advantage of this growth. Though sales for fiscal 1999 were more than 30 percent lower than the year previous, there were signs that the company was doing better, particularly with strong fourth quarter sales and net income.
Principal Subsidiaries: Adaptec Mfg. (S) Pte. Ltd. (Singapore); Adaptec Gmbh (Germany); Adaptec Europe S.A. (Belgium); Adaptec Japan Ltd.
Principal Competitors: Hewlett-Packard; Digi International; Oak Technology.
The pervasive global economy is driving the continued and exponential growth of enterprise data. The demand for high-speed access to data, generated by e-commerce, email, various enterprise productivity applications, as well as web serving and digitized media and information - is insatiable at all levels of the enterprise. Companies are under tremendous pressure to store, protect, distribute, and derive value from all that data. Thus, assessing and understanding the Information Value Chain - storing the right data on the right storage - distributed throughout an enterprise has become one of the most pressing issues facing Chief Information Officers today.
Storage Today top of page
Today's storage technology market offers two broad options for storing data: direct attached storage (DAS) and networked storage, which consists of storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS).
While DAS has dominated the storage market in the past, according to IDC, 60 percent of external disk storage being purchased today is networked storage, and analysts expect it to grow significantly over the next few years. Networked storage architectures, separating servers from their storage, offer flexible, scalable capacities and offload some of the provisioning and management tasks from the server. To understand the ongoing shift from DAS to networked storage, it is necessary to first discuss the different architectures in more detail.
Direct Attached Storage top of page
In its simplest form, direct attached storage (DAS) consists of a disk drive attached directly to a server. Data is transferred using Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) commands, the most common means of I/O communication between a computer and a hard drive. In many implementations requiring large amounts of storage, the storage is a shelf of disks, or a disk subsystem.
All applications are insulated from dealing directly with the disk drives. The Server's operating system incurs the overhead of the entire flow and management disk I/O. It provides the physical disk translation through its local file system and logical volume management through a volume manager.
DAS works well in environments with a limited number of servers. However, if there are dozens of servers and significant data growth, the situation rapidly becomes unmanageable. The storage for each server has to be managed separately and can't be easily shared. Scalability is limited, and the overall efficiency of the DAS resource tends to be diminished. With the varied data management needs of today's business functions, enterprises have recognized the need to take a more cost-effective, flexible, and scalable networked storage approach for their valuable high-volume information.
two typical DAS configurations
Storage Area Networks top of page
In a storage area network (SAN), a number of servers have access to a pool of storage resources. Each server utilizes a portion of the storage yet does not know about the other server's data, so the servers share the storage and not the data. The servers are connected via host bus adapters (HBAs) to Fibre Channel switches, which in turn are connected to the Fibre Channel storage system(s). The servers and storage communicate via the Fibre Channel protocol suite, which allows SCSI commands to be transmitted via serial connections. The Fibre Channel interface and protocol allow for high throughput, and are typically only used in the most elite and demanding performance applications. Component costs are high and complexity of maintenance can make SAN implementations an undesirable choice.
Typical SAN Configuration
Total Cost of Ownership
The total cost of ownership (TCO) for operating a Fibre Channel SAN, while lower than the DAS model, is still relatively high. Although SANs benefit from the efficiencies of centralized management (which reduces TCO), the deployment cost for Fibre Channel is high. In particular, a shortage of specialized operations staff has historically been a problem.
Complexity and SAN Islands
Another issue with SANs stems from Fibre Channel being a serial interconnect, not a true network. Fibre Channel has no built-in routing capabilities and has only rudimentary address management capabilities. Also, SANs are continually plagued by interoperability issues with multi-vendor deployments. While some interoperability issues have diminished, most SANs today are still single-vendor storage environments.
Network Attached Storage top of page
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a true, mature, networked storage solution based on IP and Ethernet that has longstanding maturity and robustness from decades of use in the networking world, and incorporates volume manager and file system capabilities into the storage device. In a NAS environment, the servers are connected to the storage by a standard Ethernet network. They use network file sharing protocols, like Network File System (NFS) for UNIX/Linux and Common Internet File System (CIFS) for Windows to store and transport files over the network. NAS devices share a common data store, separate application services from file services, and share files among all clients. Many companies have found NAS devices deliver the lowest TCO of any storage approach, and because they have lower capacities and lower performance, when compared with SAN storage, they have found their place in numerous locations around the edge of an enterprise network. More recently, however, the proliferation of Gigabit Ethernet and enterprise-capable NAS servers has greatly accelerated the deployment of NAS solutions, bringing them closer to the main-stream enterprise applications in data center environments, particularly when ease of use is important. NAS can be very useful for companies needing to share files. They are usually managed individually, though some companies like Snap Server do have unified management tools, and each NAS device on the network is accessed by a single IP address.
Typical Network attached Storage Configuration
The Need for IP Storage top of page
Networked storage is a mature and well-understood technology. Many analysts believe that the main issues slowing the transition from DAS solutions to networked storage solutions are the cost and complexity associated with Fibre Channel. However, a rapidly emerging new technology promises to address both issues: Internet SCSI (iSCSI) or SCSI over IP.
iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet top of page
iSCSI is a new Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard protocol for encapsulating SCSI commands into TCP/IP packets and enabling block data transport over IP networks. iSCSI can be used to build SANs (termed: IP SANs) using a standard Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. A standard Gigabit Ethernet port on a server or switch can now connect to both block and file storage resources over Ethernet. High-level management activities-such as device access, authentication, device information, and configuration are managed using standard applications or tools. For this reason, the deployment of robust, interoperable iSCSI solutions is occurring rapidly.
Performance
First-generation iSCSI performance is well suited for the workgroup or departmental storage requirements of medium- and large-size businesses. The availability of TCP/IP engines that increase access speed by offloading network protocols further improves the performance of iSCSI at 1 Gigabit Ethernet, and will allow vendors to further scale performance to 10 Giga-bit Ethernet iSCSI in the near future.
NAS Configuration for iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet
How it Works
iSCSI communications over an existing Ethernet connection requires a host-side "Initiator" and a "Target" software driver in the NAS. The diagram above is essentially the same as in the previous NAS description in the fact that the host and NAS device are communicating over TCP/IP; but with the addition of the iSCSI Initiator software driver to the host configuration; and a Target driver to the NAS device. The interaction between the Initiator and Target mandates a server-client model, illustrated in Figure 5, where the Initiator and the Target communicate with each other using the SCSI command and data set encapsulated over TCP/IP. At the moment, there are very few iSCSI target devices; Snap Server is one of the first iSCSI implementations to provide iSCSI target support on all its GuardianOS v3-based servers.
Many companies are developing iSCSI Initiators. Some of the first releases of iSCSI Initiators have come from Microsoft, Cisco, Linux, and UNH (University of New Hampshire). However, most have yet to release iSCSI Target drivers. Snap Server, the volume leader in NAS solutions, is one of the first that has embedded iSCSI target support in its Snap Servers, providing true concurrent block and file support in single Snap Server.
iSCSI Data transfer flow
Benefits of iSCSI
By combining SCSI, Ethernet, and TCP/IP, Gigabit iSCSI delivers these key advantages:
* Builds on stable and familiar standards since Ethernet protocol and the component technologies based on Ethernet are prevalent in the enterprise environment
* Creates a SAN with a reduced TCO-installation and ongoing maintenance costs are low
* Provides a high degree of interoperability reduces disparate networks and cabling, and uses regular Ethernet switches instead of special Fibre Channel switches
* Delivers a solution with no practical distance limitations since IP datagrams can travel over the global IP network
File and Block Separation in the Enterprise top of page
Since some enterprise applications are architected to view storage as a local, direct-attached disk (block data,) NAS has not been suitable for those applications. In a typical corporate IT environment, databases require access via block access. Conversely, users require access via CIFS or NFS file services. Today, this means that a different storage device must be deployed for each access topology. Applications that best utilize SAN storage to support block-based data and the applications that best utilize NAS storage for file-based data are forcing enterprises to use disparate dedicated storage devices. Until now.
Snap Server - Block and File Unification top of page
The industry is starting to respond to this challenge with storage systems that have unified both block and file capabilities and benefit from both protocols. Snap Servers running the GuardianOS v3 are our first generation of products supporting both block and file access in a single server with simple, easy-to-use provisioning.
One of the true benefits of IP-based storage is that, for the first time, CIFS/NFS/iSCSI can travel down the existing network infrastructure - using the Gigabit network and leveraging common switches and wiring. But converging at the wire doesn't solve the provisioning problem. One of the true difficulties with storage has always been its provisioning to meet both current needs and future growth. Storage used to be really expensive, so over-allocating storage was undesirable. Though the release of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives has brought the cost of storage down, the major cost component of provisioning is an intangible one, as servers deployed for different applications and protocols must also be reprovisioned individually. Traditionally, storage reprovisioning has been performed by using capacity expansion tools. However, today's disk drives are large, resulting in long rebuild times. Unloading/loading of the data on a RAID set, in order to expand it, is too time consuming and tedious for many environments. So, the same problems apply. Converging protocols on the wire and still utilizing individual systems for handling different protocols means that enterprises are doubling up the storage devices on the network, which makes storage resource management more of an issue.
Simple, On-the-fly Provisioning
Snap Server eases the provisioning problem by creating virtual iSCSI disk devices, supported by our standard volume management. Essentially, iSCSI disks reside on a volume in the Snap Server, just like files. Both block and data files are converged in the Snap Server. The GuardianOS with Instant Capacity Expansion (I.C.E.) capability provides an easy user interface for managing real-time expansion of any volume on the Snap Server. An administrator can easily build a new RAID set and group it with an existing RAID set to form single group. This added capacity then becomes instantly available for expansion for any volume in the group.
Snap Server Advantage
With Snap Servers there is a single device on the network for both block and file data rather than two-one device dedicated to block and one to file.
Reprovisioning is done quickly and without compromising I/O performance. The UI makes it simple to create new file shares, add another iSCSI disk, resize iSCSI disks, and perform other provisioning tasks with point-and-click ease. Resizing is done instantly and without the need to unload/load anything. Snap Servers can be re-tasked at anytime. IT managers can purchase a Snap Server to meet their file-storage requirements today; and can completely change their mind and deploy it for block storage. Only the Snap Server can be re-tasked in an instant, without losing any data.
Benefits of Unified Block and File Storage
* Simplified management (i.e. same for NAS and IP SAN)
* iSCSI disks (FileDisks) can be backed up like any other disk attached to the server
* Provisioning problems are alleviated since FileDisks can be grown online
* FileDisks are all RAID protected against mechanical failures
Who Can Use It?
iSCSI or IP SANs with unified block and file will initially be most attractive to organizations with the following environments:
* Distributed data environments
* Significant data growth over the past five years
* Proliferation of Intel® architecture servers in divisional, departmental, and workgroup environments
* Business requirements to consolidate data storage among small servers and their management, and to improve operational efficiency, data availability, and storage resource management
* Budget and staffing limitations which preclude a Fibre Channel SAN deployment
* Heavy use of critical business applications that require block storage, and until now, had to be stored on a separate server, including:
o Microsoft Exchange messaging solutions
o SharePoint portals
o GreatPlains financial
o Customer relationship management (CRM)
o Small to medium databases
o Shadow copy vaulting
o Practically any nearline storage application
iSCSI Deployment Scenario
iSCSI Deployment Examples top of page
Server proliferation is increasing the complexity and expense of storage management in many distributed enterprise environments, particularly for applications experiencing significant data growth. The configuration in Figure 7 deploys centralized network storage for the many server types and delivers significant savings in TCO for applications where a common storage pool is desired or where there is a need for a common block (iSCSI) and file (NFS/CFIS) storage pool. Snap Servers can be backed up with the embedded BakBone NetVault software or backup agents for VERITAS, CA, and Legato. Optional Network Data Management Protocol support provides backup flexibility.
Conclusion top of page
Organizations with server proliferation and data growth problems in departmental and workgroup data centers will be the first to benefit from the introduction of IP storage and iSCSI, as they replace DAS and accelerate the transition to more cost-effective and flexible networked storage solutions. As the technology matures and performance increases, iSCSI-based storage solutions will gradually expand to displace DAS in high-end data centers and mission-critical environments, making iSCSI-based IP SANs ubiquitous.
CHALLENGE
Incompatible supply chain processes due to rapid growth through acquisitions. Immediate need was a rapid supply chain assessment to identify core problem areas and specific remedial actions that would create significant process improvements (not just incremental gains).
WHY ABEAM?
Reputation for excellence in supply chain consulting, including a highly successful prior engagement with U.S.-based Dell Computer.
SOLUTION
ABeam analyzed Adaptec's supply chain, resulting in a transformation roadmap that estimated return on investment for:
* Improving Adaptec's liquidity position (inventory and cash-to-cash conversion cycle)
* Establishing build-to-order capabilities to keep pace with changing market demands
* Transforming supply chain demand with best practices for supply matching and inventory velocity
* Focusing the company on execution through metrics, performance monitoring and accountability standards
REAL BENEFITS
ABeam identified seven supply chain improvements that could begin producing results within one quarter, leading to a minimum ROI over three years of $23.5 million. Adaptec executive management, with first-hand exposure to ABeam's expertise, commissioned a joint partnership with ABeam to implement those recommendations, using a formal gain sharing program that aligns ABeam-driven project success with Adaptec's success. Early results include:
* Reduced inventory stocking levels
* Increased inventory turnover
* Improved forecasting accuracy and controls
* Seamless integration of ABeam consultants with Adaptec staff to create a homogeneous transformation team focused on Adaptec's success
Adaptec, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADPT), HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) will team to debut the Serial Attached SCSI interface working with both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives June 18-20 at CeBIT America in New York City.
Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA compatibility will give organizations a new level of flexibility in configuring disk storage for cost and performance in direct-attached and networked storage deployments. The joint demonstration in the SAN Exchange Pavilion, booth 2419, at the Jacob K. Javits Center will highlight the Serial Attached SCSI interface's support for both Serial Attached SCSI drives and Serial ATA drives. Serial Attached SCSI also enables the design of smaller form factor disk drives for high-density computing environments.
"Serial Attached SCSI and small form factor enterprise-class drives will provide scalable speed, decreased power consumption and increased integration flexibility for diverse data needs in a variety of storage system architectures," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner Dataquest.
Serial Attached SCSI - Supporting Transactional and Reference Data
By supporting both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives, the Serial Attached SCSI interconnect will let organizations easily deploy and manage disk storage in servers, external storage appliances and networked storage solutions based on the performance and capacity requirements of each data type, such as:
* Reference data, consisting of infrequently accessed or archived information including electronic documents, presentations and graphics used in word processing, email, graphics, CAD/CAM, medical diagnostic and other applications; and
* Transactional data, typically high-demand information frequently and concurrently accessed by multiple users. This includes data from e-commerce, credit card and bank transactions, customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SRM), multimedia and other bandwidth-intensive enterprise applications.
New Flexibility For Deploying and Managing Storage
Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drive compatibility will offer a number of key benefits to system builders, integrators and end users:
* End users will enjoy a new level of price/performance flexibility. Serial ATA drives will provide cost-effective capacity for reference data, while Serial Attached SCSI drives will deliver the highest performance, reliability and software management compatibility for transactional data. The ability to upgrade from Serial ATA to Serial Attached SCSI drives without having to buy a new system will simplify the purchasing decision, future-proof system server investments and reduce total cost of ownership.
* System builders will be able to leverage the universal Serial Attached SCSI interconnect to deploy common backplanes, connectors and cabling. Upgrading from Serial ATA to Serial Attached SCSI will be as simple as replacing the disk drives. Other cost-saving benefits of compatibility include simpler new-product validation and inventory management.
* VARs and system integrators will be able to standardize on a single interface, allowing them to easily configure custom systems by simply installing the appropriate disk drive type.
Serial Attached SCSI Technical Capabilities
Serial Attached SCSI solutions also will feature:
* Data transfer rates of 3 gigabits/second with a roadmap to 12 gigabits/second (1,200 megabytes/second) to deliver the highest levels of system performance for bandwidth-intensive applications such as mainline storage, video editing, and streaming video and audio in direct-attached, networked-attached and networked storage environments.
* Dual porting for improved redundancy to enable the design of high-availability systems.
* Expander hardware to enable highly flexible and scalable storage configurations of more than 16,000 mixed Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives.
* Thinner cables and smaller connectors than traditional parallel technologies, enabling better chassis airflow and cooling, simpler cable routing and design of smaller form factor hard drives for high-density computing.
Industry Leaders Team to Showcase Serial Attached SCSI at CeBIT
"Adaptec, HP and Seagate are working to give customers greater disk drive flexibility in the enterprise," said Jeff Jenkins, acting vice president, Server Storage and Infrastructure, HP Industry Standard Servers. "Serial Attached SCSI offers customers exceptional choice on their price-performance requirements, allowing server and storage customers to choose the technology that fits their specific needs - Serial Attached SCSI for performance and reliability or Serial ATA for cost-effective bulk storage capacity."
"Serial Attached SCSI will combine logical SCSI compatibility with new levels of performance, scalability and data availability to meet organizations' growing storage needs and help future-proof their storage investments," said Gary Gentry, Seagate Technology vice president, Business Development and Planning. "Adaptec, HP and Seagate Technology are pleased to be highlighting Serial Attached SCSI interconnect as the ideal choice for both Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI disk storage deployments in the enterprise."
"Adaptec is pleased to be extending its longstanding product development and engineering relationships with HP and Seagate to develop Serial Attached SCSI solutions and drive early adoption," said Ahmet Houssein, vice president and general manager of Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. "Our joint demonstration of Serial Attached SCSI/Serial ATA compatibility at CeBIT is a significant milestone in these efforts. The ability to plug both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA disk drives into the same system will give IT managers, system integrators and original equipment manufacturers unprecedented disk storage flexibility."