Barriers to IB adoption (Storage Perspective) Ashish Batwara Software Solution Architect May 01, 2007

2 LSI Confidential LSI Enterprise Storage Approach to Market System Level Expertise MegaRAID ® Stack, MyStorage ® S/W, SANtricity ®, Simplicity Host Bus Adapters, Expanders, RAID Cards, Engenio Controllers Architectures & Technologies (Fusion-MPT ®, MegaRAID ®, SerDes) Collaborate with IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, Sun, Seagate, Fujitsu, Brocade, Mellanox Enterprise Storage Communications New Markets Consumer Electronics Systems Products Custom Silicon Standard Components Silicon & Platform Enabling Technologies

3 LSI Confidential LSI OEMs (SGI, Verari) Data Direct Networks (DDN) Major IB Storage System Vendors

4 LSI Confidential LSI 6498 – InfiniBand Native Storage Array 6 th generation Redundant XBB architecture with Native InfiniBand Host Four 10 Gb/s InfiniBand host-side interfaces Eight 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel drive-side interfaces Support for up to 224 FC and/or SATA disk drives Switched back end drive module technology reduces latency and improves RAS LSI storage systems and technologies are available thru OEMs SANtricity application management tool

5 LSI Confidential Key Market Segments High End Computing (HEC)/High Perf. Computing (HPC) Market* –National Labs –Universities & Research Labs –Oil and Gas Exploration –U.S. Government Security Agencies –Pharmaceuticals Clustered Database –Wall Street (Financial Modeling) *A leading indicator for the General Purpose Computing (GPC) market

6 LSI Confidential HEC/HPC Product Purchase and Implementation Cycle Customer Product Evaluation Vendor Development Customer Research Customer Production

7 LSI Confidential Key Barriers for InfiniBand Adoption Evaluation Cycle  Started  months  Very few evaluations outside the basic server clusters  Continuing in some segments, completed in others  6-12 months  Significant number of evaluations in several segments across server and storage by large companies or data centres Available Choices  Single Source for Silicon – Mellanox  No established I/O or storage vendors for Switch, Systems or Software  Open Fabrics just starting  Single Source or Start-up no longer an issue.  Silicon – Mellanox, QLogic (Pathscale)  Switch – Topspin (Cisco), QLogic (Silverstorm), Voltaire  Systems – LSI, DDN  Software – OFED now with multiple releases Initial Cost  Less competition  High – New Technology  High fabric cost if non-IB is used as a storage  More Competition  Comparatively cheaper  Reduced with Native IB storage Operational CostHigher  Time, Resources Lower  Unified I/O fabric for Server and Storage  Technology more mature Interoperability/Software Stack  Emerging set of competing driver stacks  OFED Gen2 Multi-pathing, Failover  No support  Available OS Support  Linux Only  Linux  Windows (Partial) – Though not OFED  Solaris – Still under development

8 LSI Confidential Key Benefits with InfiniBand Performance –Wirespeed –RDMA Interoperability –Single software stack with Open Source (OFED) Simplified Management/Unified Fabric –Single system and storage management –Total Cost of Ownership –Consolidated training, Common infrastructure service & spare parts Cost Advantage –Superior price per port for performance and features Customer Product Evaluation Vendor Development Customer Research Customer Production

9 LSI Confidential Questions to be answered Can this technology be used widespread in production environment ? Can I afford the outage time required for driver upgrades ? Will generic OFED driver include timely vendor specific enhancements ? Sufficient and mature tools, utilities for troubleshooting and diagnostics ? Can we simulate growing network sizes ? Scalability and Management limits? Is IB gaining momentum beyond HPC? Customer Product Evaluation Vendor Development Customer Research Customer Production

10 LSI Confidential Next Steps for Vendors and Community IB driver maturity –OFED Stabilize Performance issue Broaden the OS availability beyond Linux Education and awareness –Training material –Quick start guide –Publications (IBTA can push) –Road shows (Can IBTA/OFED be helpful in this area?) –Technology demonstration beyond HEC/HPC How to push IB to GPC segment? –Competing technologies - FC, 10 Gig Ethernet, iSCSI, SAS. Existing FC infrastructure. –Conservative nature of data centers on new technologies –Normally it takes 5-6 years and IB storage is only out for 2-3 years Maturity of protocols and standards –SRP – Matured and adopted –Adoption of iSER –SNIA support for management – (SMI-S)

11 LSI Confidential