Startup Jeda Networks Takes SDN Approach To Storage Networks

Jeda Networks' technology takes a pure software approach to storage networking by abstracting the primary services of a storage network from the underlying physical hardware to reduce the cost and complexity of storage in virtualized and cloud environments, said Stuart Berman, CEO and founder of the Newport Beach, Calif.-based company.

"We virtualize the ways servers communicate with storage," Berman said. "And by doing that, we bring economics to what has been an expensive part of the IT environment, the storage network."

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Jeda Networks' technology virtualizes a physical storage network into a software overlay using the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol that talks to industry-standard networks, as well as scales for users from SMBs to cloud providers, Berman said

"This is the killer app for SDNs," he said. "SDN [software-defined networking] is a general term that applies to LANs and WANs. We apply it to the storage network. We see a network today that can replace a higher-cost implementation."

Joe Colgate, vice president of sales for Jeda Networks, said that all a solution provider needs is a 10-GbE switch from any qualified vendor, with no other specialized hardware or software required. "The switch will act as a FCoE switch," Colgate said.

Berman said his company's technology is an easy way to add high-performance storage networking to a converged storage-server-networking solution without the need for specialized storage networking switches or adaptors.

In fact, one of Jeda Networks' target markets will be converged infrastructure OEMs as well as other storage vendors. The company has already signed up two OEM customers that Berman declined to name. One of them is an SSD vendor that wants to see the bandwidth of Fibre Channel applied to its products.

Jeda Network has yet to adopt the OpenFlow open source networking protocol, Berman said. "But as it gets more common in the industry, Jeda will use it as a way to access switches," he said. "We'll use whatever is common."

PUBLISHED FEB. 22, 2013