Firms align to boost storage technology
EMC, a company riding the wave of demand for large-scale computer storage systems, announces a 12-company partnership called FibreAlliance.
The alliance's goal is to improve management standards for networks based on Fibre Channel, a high-speed connection method using either copper wires or fiber optic cables.
Fibre Channel provides a two-channel connection to disk drives and makes it easier to create high-speed links between storage devices and the servers that access the data. Fibre Channel is well suited for the construction of a storage area network (SAN), a technique that consolidates data storage onto an independent network.
EMC has brought 11 companies into the FibreAlliance partnership, including Hewlett-Packard, Veritas, and Legato Systems, EMC said today.
In addition, there are several companies active in the areas of the Fibre Channel hardware or the "storage area networking," such as Ancor, <="" a="" rel="noopener nofollow" class="c-regularLink" target="_blank">, QLogic, Emulex, and others.
The new group plans to write a detailed specification for fitting all the bits of networks--hubs, routers, switches, and adapters--into network management tools. Fibre Channel doesn't have such a standard today, EMC says, and needs one to help push the new technology into wider use.