About the Author

James Long is a storage networking systems engineer who works for Cisco Systems, Inc., in the Field Sales Organization. James previously held the position of Global Storage Networking Solutions Architect within the Cisco IT Infrastructure Architecture team. During his tenure in the Cisco IT organization, James authored design guides, technology evaluations, and strategic planning documents. Before joining Cisco in 1999, James contracted with AT&T/TCI, Nextel International, and GTE following five years of employment in the open systems VAR community. James has more than 16 years of IT experience spanning server administration, database administration, software development, multiprotocol network design and administration, remote access solutions design and administration, IP telephony and IP contact center design, content distribution design, storage network design, and advanced technology evaluation. James holds numerous technical certifications from Cisco, Microsoft, Novell, SNIA, and CompTIA.

About the Technical Reviewers

Philip Lowden currently works as a storage manager at Cisco Systems, Inc. Prior to this role, he worked for four years at Cisco and six years at Electronic Data Systems as a senior UNIX systems administrator performing production systems architecture and support duties on a variety of host and storage platforms. He was also an officer in the U.S. Air Force for six years. He holds a Masters of Science degree in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Nebraska, and a Bachelor of Art degree in English from Saint Meinrad College. He is an SNIA-certified FC-SAN Specialist. Philip is married and has two children.

Thomas Nosella, CCIE No. 1395, is director of engineering within the Cisco Systems Data Center Switching Business Unit, an organization responsible for LAN, server fabric, and storage switching products and solutions. Thomas and his team of technical marketing engineers are responsible for the creation, validation, and promotion of intelligent and scalable designs and solutions for the Ciscos enterprise and service provider customer base. Thomas was one of the initial members of Andiamo Systems, Inc., and helped bring the Cisco MDS 9000 family of SAN switching products to market. Prior to working on storage, Thomas managed enterprise design teams focused on large-scale Ethernet design, server farm design, and content delivery networking. Thomas received his Bachelor of Engineering and Management from McMaster University in Ontario. Thomas received his CCIE certification in 1995.

Rob Peglar is vice president of Technology, Marketing for Xiotech Corporation. A 28-year industry veteran and published author, he has global responsibility for the shaping and delivery of strategic marketing, emerging technologies, and defining Xiotech's product and solution portfolio, including business and technology requirements, marketing direction, planning, execution, technology futures, strategic direction, and industry/customer liaison. Rob serves on the Board of Directors for the Blade Systems Alliance and is the co-author and track chair of the SNIA Virtualization Tutorial. He has extensive experience in the architecture, design, implementation, and operation of large heterogeneous SANs, distributed clustered virtual storage architectures, data management, disaster avoidance, and compliance, and is a sought-after speaker and panelist at leading storage and networking-related seminars and conferences worldwide. He holds the B.S. degree in computer science from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri and performed graduate work at Washington University's Sever Institute of Engineering. His research background includes I/O performance analysis, queuing theory, parallel systems architecture and OS design, storage networking protocols, and virtual systems optimization.