The Storage Architect » brocade

FCoE

Chris M Evans — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:14:00 +0000

Fibre Channel over Ethernet has been back on my radar recently, especially as it was touted again at Storage Networking World in Orlando last week. Unfortunately I wasn’t there and didn’t see for myself, although I was in Orlando the week before on vacation. I can imagine if I’d extended or moved the holiday to include SNW that I’d be none too popular with Mrs E and my sons.

Any hoo, I looked back over my blog and I first briefly mentioned FCoE back in April 2007, a whole 12 months ago. Now, we know 12 months is a long time in the storage world (in which time iSCSI will have claimed another 3000% market share, EMC will have purchased another 50,000 storage companies of various and dubious value, HDS will have released nothing and IBM will have developed 2 or 3 new technologies which won’t see the light of day until I’m dead and buried). I expect then that FCoE should have moved on somewhat and it appears it almost has. Products are being touted, for example, Emulex with the LP21000 CNA card (not an HBA card, please note the new acronym) and Cisco with their Nexus 5000 switch (plus others).

At this stage I don’t believe the FCoE protocol has been fully ratified as a standard. I have been spending some time wading reading through the FC-BB-5 project documentation on the T11 website, covering FCoE to understand exactly how the protocol works in more detail and how it can be compared to native fibre channel, iSCSI, iFCP and FCIP. In the words of Cilla, here’s a quick reminder on storage protocols in case you’d forgotten.

Fibre channel and the Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) provide a lossless, packet based data transmission protocol for moving data between a host (initiator) and a storage device (target). FCP implements SCSI over fibre channel. To date, fibre channel has been implemented on dedicated hardware from vendors including Cisco and McDATA/Brocade. iSCSI uses TCP/IP to exchange data between a host and storage device using the SCSI protocol. It therefore includes the overhead of TCP/IP but provides for lossy and long distance connectivity. iFCP and FCIP are two implementations which encapsulate FCP in TCP/IP packets. FCIP extends an existing fibre channel SAN, whereas iFCP allows data to be routed between fibre channel SANs.

FCoE will sit alongside fibre channel and allow the transmission of FCP packets at the Ethernet layer, removing the need for TCP/IP (and effectively allowing TCP/IP and FCP packets to exist on the same Ethernet network).

So hurrah, we have another storage protocol available in our armoury and the storage vendors are telling us that this is good because we can converge our IP and storage networks into one and save a few hundred dollars per server on HBA cards and SAN ports. But is it all good? Years back, I looked at using IP over fibre channel as a way to remove network interface cards from servers. The aim was to remove the NICs used for backup and put that traffic across the SAN using IPFC. I never did it. Not because I couldn’t; I’m sure technically it would have worked, but rather because the idea scared the willies out of “the management” for two reasons (a) we had no idea of the impact of two traffic types going over the same physical network and (b) the Network Team would have “sent the boys round” to sort us out.

Will this be any different with FCoE? Will anyone really be 100% happy mixing traffic? Will the politics allow the Networks teams to own SAN traffic entirely? Let’s face it, in large environments I currently advocate the separation of host, tape and replication traffic to separate fibre channel fabrics. I can’t imagine reversing my position and going back to single consolidated networks.

So then, is FCoE going to be better in smaller environments where the consolidation is more practical? Well, if that’s the case, then surely that makes FCoE just another niche player to FC, just like iSCSI.

It’s early days yet. There are a million-and-one questions which need to be answered, not least of which will be how FCoE will interoperate with standard FC, how drivers will interact with the existing storage protocol stack on a server and how performance/throughput will be managed. Some of these issues have been answered, however this blog entry is already far too long and rambling to include a discussion on these points this time and I will save them for another time.

Brocade Update

Chris M Evans — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Since I wrote about Brocade shares on 7th November, the share price has dropped from $9.28 to $7.74, or 16.6%. That changes the P/E ratio from 17.19 to 14.33. Does that make them more investable? Perhaps. In August the shares dropped as low as $6. In the last 52 weeks, the lowest price has been $4.79. I think if the price gets to $5 then I’ll invest. That seems to me like a reasonable price. I’m not sure what is driving the negative sentiment against Brocade (other than perhaps the general market downturn).

Bear in mind, those of us in the UK that the $/£ is still at 2.05, making US investments even more attractive.

On another investment note, 3Par are back to their IPO price of $14 after their 2nd day of trading….

Analysis: Brocade

Chris M Evans — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:07:00 +0000

This is the next of a series of posts on storage companies.

** DISCLAIMER: This and related blog entries are for fun only and do not represent investment advice. You should make your own opinions on investments or consult a financial adviser **

Background

Brocade Communication Systems Inc is one of the leading manufacturers of storage networking hardware. As one of the original developers of the fibre channel protocol, Brocade is positioned at the centre of storage networking technology. In addition to storage hardware, Brocade also markets and sells FAN technology, including Wide Area File Services and file virtualisation software.

In January 2007 Brocade purchased (merged with) McDATA Corporation reducing the major players in the fibre channel market from three to two.

Market Details

Brocade is quoted on the NASDAQ market with the ticker code BRCD.

Shares Outstanding: 389,774,000
Market Capitalisation: $ 3,617,102,720
Earnings Per Share: $ 0.54
P/E Ratio: 17.19
Yield: None

Figures from http://www.nasdaq.com/ on 6 November 2007

Brocade does not declare dividends, so all future value in the shares needs to be gained from the increase in value of the shares. With a P/E Ratio of over 17, Brocade’s shares are priced to expect future value. Clearly as an investment, the question is whether this is likely to occur.

Competitors

As previously mentioned, Brocade merged with one of their major competitors in January 2007. In the fibre channel switch space, this leaves Cisco Systems as the only major competitor for high end fibre channel switches. In the FAN market there are many competitors, including Acopia, Netapp, EMC/Rainfinity and others.

Outlook

The fibre channel market is maturing and as such, growth in this market is incremental. Port prices (the usual way FC hardware is sold) have reduced from over $2000/port to less than $500 in the current market. Brocade are certainly not bringing anything new to the party in terms of their FC business. In fact, FC is likely to be eroded by iSCSI and potentially FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) which poses the possibility of relegating expensive fibre channel hardware in favour of standard Ethernet technology.

Consequently I see times being tough for Brocade. The McDATA purchase wasn’t an easy one. McDATA were on a slide and I believe Brocade acquired them for market share and their customer base. In the FC space, integrating the McDATA technology with that of Brocade initially proved a nightmare as the roadmap for FC wasn’t clear. Brocade now faces a significant challenge against Cisco and so needs the other non-FC markets to grow their business. For a company that currently does not declare dividends that makes the stock purchase a simple one; how quickly will revenue and profit grow to increase the asset value of the shares?

I think slowly and so I’d make Brocade a “hold”.

On the subject of Seagate, Stephen posted and asked whether I saw it as a sell, hold or buy. At this stage I think I would like to hold a hard disk manufacturer in my virtual portfolio, however whether that is Seagate or WD (Western Digital) remains to be seen. I’ll make the decision once I’ve evaluated WD.

Where are all the simulators

Chris M Evans — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:47:00 +0000

I love the Netapp simulator (well, apart from the annoying issues with creating and deleting disks) and I use it all the time. It is great for testing ideas, testing scripting and generally refreshing knowledge on commands before having to touch real equipment. I use it with VMware (as I have probably mentioned before) and I can knock up a new environment in a few minutes by cloning an existing machine. Netapp have got a huge advantage in offering the tool as it enables customers who can’t or won’t put in test equipment to do work and protect their production environments.

So, where are all the other simulators? Is it just that I don’t know they exist or do most vendors not provide them? For the same reasons as I mentioned above, if there were simulators for EMC DMX, HDS USP, Cisco and Brocade/McDATA switches, then there would be a huge opportunity for people to test and develop scripts, test upgrades and other useful work.

Would anyone else like a simulator? Can the vendors tell me why they don’t produce them?

Buy Buy Buy

Chris M Evans — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:28:00 +0000

More acquisition news; Brocade and McDATA are finally just Brocade after the purchase completes. There’s a snazzy new logo

which I can’t decide is like a pair of red angel wings, or some convoluted join of the M and B from the two companies. Personally, I preferred the old logo depicting a fabric, it worked for me. I even had a lovely “personal” email from Michael Klayko (as I’m sure lots of other people did).

Anyway, moving on, what’s more interesting is IBM bought SoftTek. Now they have a great product, TDMF, a piece of software that really made me go “wow!” when I first saw it in action. It literally is a transparent data mover. With the mainframe version (I was a proper storage admin when I started out on the mainframe) you could sync up many volumes in real time and perform an instant swap on them, allowing migration of TB of storage in seconds. I used the product to migrate data from an old storage array to new without any user impact or input at all. I hope IBM uses its new jewel well.