How Simple Can It Get?

When I began working on the ATA-over-Ethernet protocol (IEEE Standard Ethernet Type 0x88a2), the only way a sysadmin could add network storage was by using complicated technology inspired by the mainframe world. It was both expensive and convoluted. 

In the early 2000s, I watched the rise of Linux in the server room. It was a bigger and better way to do computing, launched just as the Intel racked server was getting started. It was the same change I saw after Unix. Suddenly, simplicity was applied to a scaled operation.

I knew the importance of this due to my long background with mainframe, mini, and microcomputer operations. (I was the first person at the University of Georgia to get ahold of the UNIX operating system way back when.)

The only problem was that the machines were merely IBM PC clones racked with 2 to 4 drives. Those disks were captive to the sheet metal with their data hanging by a single-motherboard thread. You needed a screwdriver to get data out of a box that had released its magic smoke.

I started thinking about how to put the most common disk-command set—ATA—on ordinary Ethernet cable connected to common switches. This would create a storage array unlike any of the expensive, complex mainframe-style optical network boxes favored by the raised floor crowd.

The first Coraid storage product shipped in early 2005. It was to big-box storage companies, what UNIX had been to the mainframe. It simplified everything and did so for lower cost and better performance.

And that’s what Coraid is still doing today: creating network storage arrays as simple as they possibly can get.

It’s so simple to set up a Coraid SRX array that it only takes 3 commands:

1. Set the unit’s shelf number
2. create a RAID
3. Use the “online” command

That’s all there is to it. If you’d like to learn more about the simplicity of Coraid, send me an email to [email protected] or fill out the Get Started form here.