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HP, QLogic and Microsoft unveiled a storage area network (SAN) for small businesses at Storage Networking World that starts at just under $10,000.
With the enterprise market saturated, storage vendors have been moving down market by targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with Fibre Channel SANs that are easy to install and manage, hoping to compete in that market with IP-based storage.
The HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1000 Small Business SAN Kit offers “breakthrough simplicity in SAN acquisition, configuration and installation,” HP claims.
Kyle Fitze, director of marketing for HP’s SAN division, said HP and its partners have managed to “simplify and automate everything down to a few mouse clicks … so a customer can get it up and running in less than an hour.”
For $9,999, customers get the HP StorageWorks MSA1000, a 2Gb Fibre Channel disk array with two QLogic’s SANblade HBAs and an 8-port Fibre Channel QLogic SANbox Switch, all in a single box, for 24% less than the cost of buying the components separately. The system doesn’t come with disk drives, which Fitze estimates will cost $300-$1,000.
The system can scale up to 12TB, and HP also offers high availability options. “It can really scale,” Fitze told Enterprise Storage Forum.
Fitze compared the MSA 1000 Small Business SAN Kit to the EMX CLARiiON CX300, which lists for $15,500.
The kit offers simplified setup and configuration via the HP Small Business SAN installation CD. Based on the QLogic SANsurfer Small Business SAN Wizard, the installation software lets customers get the entire SAN up and running with less than 25 mouse clicks.
HP Expands NAS Offerings
HP also unveiled a new family of NAS offerings under the HP ProLiant Storage Servers brand.
To support the new HP ProLiant ML350, ML370 and DL380 Storage Servers, HP also announced enhancements to its HP ProLiant iSCSI Feature Pack products so customers can protect their Ethernet investments and avoid upgrading to Fibre Channel as they move from direct-attached storage to networked storage.
The Feature Pack supports SQL 2000 and Oracle Database 9i and 10g, and it also includes the new HP ProLiant Application Storage Manager software to simplify the hosting and management of Microsoft Exchange storage on HP ProLiant Storage Servers. The new software automates the configuration process and gives administrators a single point of management for monitoring and allocating storage capacity.
The new products are the result of a “well-defined desire we’re hearing from SMBs to make the transition to network storage,” said Ian Duncan, HP’s worldwide marketing manager for NAS.
