Dell Cranks Out Storage Server for SMBs

Recognizing the importance of serving the growing legion of small and medium-sized business customers, Dell on Monday unveiled a network-attached storage (NAS) server to help SMBs manage their increasing volumes of data.

Dell rivals IBM , HP , Hitachi Data Systems , and Network Appliance have all released NAS or storage area network (SAN) servers and devices tailored for SMBs, spurred by the demand from a new influx of small businesses and departments within larger enterprises. Analysts have forecast multi-million dollar opportunities for systems vendors to cater to these buyers.

Dell’s late entrance reflects its strategy of waiting until the market has been saturated by competitors before it sells lower cost products to tempt customers that may be waiting for the best price to come along. While the Round Rock, Texas-based company often rolls out storage products with partner EMC , a spokesperson for the vendor said the 745N is purely a Dell product, joining the preexisting NAS models 725N, 770N, and 775N.

The PowerVault 745N offers up to four terabytes of external SCSI-attached storage along with features that make the machine easier to use for departments with one- or two-person IT staffs, according to a Dell statement. The box also offers management features to make sure customers can easily back up and consolidate data. Ideally, Dell would like its customers to be able to migrate their storage data onto one 745N machine.

A 1U rack product, the 745N features software options in which customers can take “snapshot” copies of their data, allowing them to revert back to previous versions of data to fend off file deletion or system failures. Dell also throws in status reporting tools for management through a single console.

Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage, says another ease-of-use selling point is that the 745N takes as little as 15 minutes to deploy, an inviting proposition for small companies or departments with few IT personnel.

As a byproduct of its deep partnership with Microsoft and Intel , the server runs Windows Storage Server 2003 on Intel Celeron or Pentium 4 processors with speeds up to 3.2 gigahertz, and offers capacity ranging from 160GB to 4TB. It supports Windows, Linux, NetWare, UNIX, and Macintosh operating systems.

The PowerVault 745N, available now at a base price of $1,799, also supports Dell PowerVault tape backup devices and data protection software from VERITAS Software and Yosemite Technologies.

Story courtesy of Internet News.

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