Shared, fast, and reliable data access is critical to closing the gap in managing large data files over long distances. Until today, data either had to be copied over the WAN to local storage each time it was needed-creating potential issues with data security and consistency-or slow network file sharing technologies like NFS had to be used. In either case, valuable time was lost waiting for data. This demonstration shows the potential to remove these constraints in sharing information by providing the first high-performance shared filesystem for WAN computing--ensuring fast data access to the same files and filesystems from systems thousands of miles apart.

This demonstration capability verifies that critical information can be accessed with much greater performance than NFS mounting or FTP. Supporting distances up to 8000 km (5000 miles), engineers and scientists have the potential for quick and transparent access to their critical data, no matter where they may be located. No other test has come close to matching this performance and distance combination.

There are no smoke and mirrors here. This demonstration is based on existing technologies--the SGI® CXFS™ shared filesystem technology, LightSand SONET-based Fibre Channel Gateways, SONET networks, and SGI SAN infrastructure.

LightSand has developed a revolutionary new SONET gateway that efficiently transports both Fibre Channel and IP data across the WAN. The LightSand S-series gateways directly couple Fibre Channel onto readily available SONET, DWDM, or dedicated fibre-carefully preserving the buffer-to-buffer credit mechanisms that have given Fibre Channel its high levels of performance. The LightSand S-600 gateway provides data rates of up to 74MB per second at distances in excess of 8000 kilometers. This revolutionary device provides higher throughput than any other WAN gateway and dramatically exceeds the performance of any system that uses routed IP across the WAN. The S-600 provides the highest performance and the most cost-effective method of moving large amounts of data across the WAN.

Coupling the cost-effectiveness of LightSand FC/SONET gateways with the workflow improvements of fast shared files, SGI and LightSand are poised to extend SAN fabrics to wide area networks and the grid, providing true high-performance file sharing over long distances.

Examples of WAN File Sharing in action:

• Distance simulator demo (PDF 349K)
• Supercomputing 2002 SGI booth demo (PDF 352K)