A partnership between Alcatel, British Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, and Brocade has completed what they describe as "the industry's longest transmission of native Storage Area Network services over integrated DWDM/SDH networks".
Deploying Alcatel's metro DWDM and SDH systems, Brocade SAN infrastructure and H-P's StorageWorks storage systems, British Telecom carried synchronous storage data replication services live over a distance of 300km — from Madrid to Albacete in Spain.
Business users such as large corporations will be able to synchronously replicate stored data in remote locations up to 300km away. Before this test, native SAN data could only be replicated in a synchronous way over a distance of about 100km, depending on a network's topology.
The achievement gives corporations more options when they are looking to protect their data by extending the reach of their storage data management. Operators can build on investments already made in network infrastructure to offer a range of storage services.
"As the need for data storage has grown, we had to create new application models to help our customers secure their data anywhere," said Catherine Hawley, senior VP Applications Management & Hosting of BT Ignite.
·Alcatel's 1696 Metro Span metro DWDM system has received Fabric Aware status, confirming interoperability with Brocade's SilkWorm family of fabric switches.