1. Page 1 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. IBM SAN File System: It’s Finally Here. Now What? Jamie Gruener Senior Analyst Enterprise Computing & Networking The Yankee Group Note: An archive of this webcast is available for viewing from www.searchstorage.com/webcasts

2. Page 2 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. Agenda The overarching pain of file systems Understanding file systems in under 30 seconds…. IBM SAN File System – What is it? Benefits and Challenges Competitive Landscape

3. Page 3 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. What’s the Challenges of File Systems Today File systems are core to file management –But challenges have existed in file systems that gradually have been addressed Key problems customers grapple with: –Where the file resides –How the file can be accessed –How many copies of the files are created –How well the storage environment is utilized –How well customers can implement common policies for the entire environment…

4. Page 4 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. Different Ways of Solving the Problem Different types of file systems –SAN File System Allows sharing of files in converged NAS/SAN –Clustered File System Full file access shared between all nodes in the cluster – and all nodes understand file system Sometimes called distributed file system –Application File System Control/understanding of cluster controlled by application

5. Page 5 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. What’s IBM SAN File System Based on StorageTank technology Core features –Global namespace –Storage pools –Policy-based file space provisioning/quotas –FlashCopy Image Delivery architecture –2-8 metadata servers (IBM xSeries) –Initial IBM storage support, extending to heterogeneous support in 2004

6. Page 6 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. Benefits and Challenges Benefits –Improved data sharing –Improved storage utilization –Boosted application availability –Support for SMI-S, some integration with Tivoli –Improved manageability Challenges –Isn’t initially fully heterogeneous today –It’s the first release –IBM will still need to educate customers about this architectural design

7. Page 7 © Copyright 2003, the Yankee Group. All rights reserved. Competitive Landscape (Examples) SAN File System –EMC Highroad, ADIC Clustered File System –PolyServe, Sistina, Spinnaker Networks (Integrated), Isilon Systems, Sun Application File System –Oracle 9i RAC, IBM DB2 UDB EEE