NetApp Goes Big For Small Biz

Just because we call some businesses small doesn’t mean they don’t rack up a lot of data. Just ask Network Appliance, which has launched a new business unit to sell storage to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB).

The storage systems vendor on Monday celebrated the new division with its first appliance, the StoreVault S500, which securely stores a lot of files for SMBs struggling to get a handle on fast-growing data.

By moving aggressively into the SMB market, NetApp is going after storage rivals such as EMC, HP, and even partner IBM like never before.

Yankee Group says the storage systems market for SMBs represents a $7 billion market opportunity in the U.S. over the next several years.

NetApp’s new StoreVault S500 uses the vendor’s Data OnTap operating system to handle major protocols such as network-attached storage (NAS), iSCSI and Fibre Channel; customers no longer need separate boxes for Fibre Channel, iSCSI or NAS storage.

“The SMB customer no longer has to be confused about NAS or SAN — we do both,” said Sajai Krishnan, general manager of StoreVault at NetApp. “Customers have a lot of storage attached to various servers and it’s difficult to figure out where storage is fully utilized with what server, or where it is underutilized.”

Krishnan said the S500 can help customers better reign in their storage.

The machine is scalable to six terabytes and works with either 250 or 500 gigabyte SATAdrives. Drives can be changed on the fly without disrupting system operations.

The S500 also includes data-protection utilities such as RAID-DP to guard against dual drive failure, and predictive failure analysis to anticipate drive failures and allow them to be replaced without powering down the machine.

NetApp has also included its patented Snapshot technology for logging as many as 250 Snapshot images, as well as SnapRestore for real-time data restoration.

Available now, StoreVault S500 costs roughly $5,000 for starters and is being sold now in the U.S. from StoreVault resellers. Specific pricing is available directly from StoreVault VARs.

StorageIO analyst Greg Schulz said the S500 is an example of the new trend for SMB-based storage solutions.

In this movement, block and file and storage uses NAS, iSCSI and FC to meet different application and service needs while supporting what have been traditionally enterprise-class features, including snapshots, remote mirroring and replication.

The analyst also said the S500 is similar to 10 to 11 years ago, when NetApp started out with what today would probably be considered an SMB-focused appliance.

“Hence, NetApp has returned to their basic DNA roots to open a new front in the SMB battle for storage spending while continuing to expand on the enterprise front,” Schulz said.

NetApp has been busy of late, unveiling products across its lines to maintain its strong growth rate.

In May, the company unveiled the high-end FAS6000 arrays to make it clear that it is gunning for more SAN market share.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., company followed that launch up two weeks ago with a storage hardware/software combination for high-performance computing.

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com