Networking equipment maker QLogic unveiled Mt. Rainier, a host bus adapter technology that brings server-based caching to the SAN in the data center. It resides inside clustered or non-clustered servers and creates a scalable, shared SANcache that can be used by all the connected boxes. Mt. Rainer offers options that work with PCIe flash cards and industry standard SAS/SATA SSDs.

The technology offers high-availability by providing users the ability to mirror data caches between two Mt. Rainer-powered adapter cards. You don’t need separate software for the caching agent/filter driver and flash card driver because QLogic’s standard driver and embedded caching intelligence manage the flash storage/caching while offloading the host CPU.

Chris Humphrey, vice president of corporate marketing at QLogic, gives the value proposition:

“The distance from the SAN to the server processor means latency. It’s a limitation of storage array controllers in the SAN. And, with server-side SSDs today, it’s really direct-attached storage … it requires more [software] drivers, more complexity and more dependencies,” he said. “So, if you can take those server SSDs and bring them into the SANs, you’re able to use them as shared resources.”

Mt. Rainer is due to hit general availability sometime in early 2013.

The Wikibon take on QLogic’s new announcement is that it has a lot of potential, but the company will have to work closely with its OEM partners to fully unlock it. Wikibon Senior analyst Stu Miniman writes that the Mt. Rainer technology can “allow server-based flash to become a standard for enterprise configurations across a broader range of applications.”

Less latency and increased accessibility of flash resources is something Fusion-io’s ION SAN software also addresses. The company’s software-defined approach aims to realize these two benefits while also reducing hardware costs.