Sanrad Asks Channel Help To Rope In Rogue Servers

Sanrad this week started shipping a new version of its intelligent SAN devices that allow the storage capacity of "rogue" servers, which are servers not connected to a SAN, to be managed as if they were on a SAN.

Sanrad is also shifting to an all-channel sales model in the United States based on its experience with its European sales channel business, said Dave DuPont, senior vice president of marketing and business development for the San Mateo, Calif.-based vendor.

Sanrad's new V-Switch 3400 reaches out to non-SAN-attached servers via IP networks to turn their internal hard drives into iSCSI SAN-attached drives and connect them to an existing Fibre Channel SAN storage pool or Fibre Channel array, DuPont said.

"To servers, it looks like an array," DuPont said. "It has Web-based tools to carve volumes, set up mirrors, and so on. And to storage, it looks like a server. So a Fibre Channel SAN administrator just gives us some LUNs."

The V-Switch 3400 appliance provides a low-cost alternative to Fibre Channel for consolidating storage into a centralized location, DuPont said. It also includes snapshot, local and remote data mirroring and replication, and serverless LAN-free backups.

Sanrad has traditionally sold its appliances direct to customers in the U.S., while in Europe the company has been using an indirect channel approach, DuPont said.

Based on its experience in Europe, the company is now moving to a 100-percent channel sales model, he said. As a result, it is rolling out its first formal channel program to perspective solution providers. The program, which has yet to be finalized, will include deal registration, as larger channel technical sales and support organization, an outbound lead-generation program, and yet-to-be-determined incentives for meeting certain goals, he said.

Rich Kuhar, area manager at Arkay Storage Solutions, an Akron, Ohio-based solution provider that has worked with Sanrad for some time, said Sanrad is a pioneer in the iSCSI space. "We consider them an iSCSI evangelist," Kuhar said.

Arkay has been selling the Sanrad appliances together with low-cost storage arrays from Nexsan Technologies, Woodland Hills, Calif., as a way to compete with other iSCSI solutions, Kuhar said. "Now we're seeing companies like LeftHand [Networks] and EqualLogic finally coming out with iSCSI storage appliances they say can now run databases," he said. "We've been installing Sanrad with Nexsan for SQL and Oracle for years."

Kuhar said there are two types of iSCSI appliances, those with extreme performance, and those with an easy-to-use GUI. Sanrad, on the other hand, lies more in the middle. "Sanrad is easy to use and set up, but still easy to fine tune," he said. "It has a very granular, comprehensive GUI. And it's still the fastest iSCSI box I've seen."

The V-Switch 3400, which replaces the V-Switch 3000, is available with a list price of $26,000. It includes four Ethernet ports and four Fibre Channel ports. The company also offers the $13,000 V-Switch 2000, with two Ethernet ports and two Fibre Channel ports, and the $29,000 V-Switch 3800, with four Ethernet ports and four Fibre Channel ports.

When configured for 100 ports, Sanrad's V-Switch family can be used to build at SAN at about $600 per port, compared to over $7000 per port for Fibre Channel, Kuhar said.

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