A handful of vendors at the Data Center Decisions conference in Chicago gave quick, speed-dating style overviews of their latest and greatest technologies yesterday, including a new Active Power Management tool from Cassatt, 10 Gbit Ethernet (GBE) intelligent network interface cards (NICs) from NextXen, iSCSI SANs from Sanrad Inc. and backup tools from Vizioncore.

Sanrad Inc. CEO Dave DuPont discussed “better ways to build storage networking.” While Fibre Channel SAN is widely used and relied upon, an iSCSI implementation can be done using existing storage, Ethernet networks, and Sanrad’s iSCSI switch.

George Pradel, Vizioncore’s senior systems engineer, showed what the company’s flagship product vRanger Pro can do. vRanger Pro, which works with VMware virtualization products, does full-image backups while virtual machines are running. It includes a VSS driver that uses Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service for consistent images and P2V disaster recovery capabilities.

Agilysys discussed the future of the data center and challenges such as density, power and cooling costs. The company specializes in data center infrastructure.

CXtec ran through their fiber optic cable infrastructure expertise and how to reduce cabling by one third to increase cooling efficiencies with Microcore, a new fiber trunk design. Another storage solution vendor, SANpulse Technologies Inc. discussed its products that automate the SAN.

NextXen pitched users on the benefits of 10 GbE intelligent networking networking technology that keep up with today’s increased CPU utilization, requiring greater bandwidth.

Cassatt proposed an active approach to power management and described a product that intelligently powers servers on and off, either by time of day, demand (i.e., turn off when idle), in power emergencies, or as operational policies dictate.

Pretty cool stuff, even if some of it has been around for a while and was simply spotlighted by vendors at the show.