As more medium-sized companies consolidate their storage, Hewlett-Packard seized
an opportunity on Tuesday with a disk array it says is easier to work with than
large-enterprise gear, but delivers more capabilities than entry-level storage.
Pursuing the efficiency of virtualization or just greater uptime, medium-size
organizations are bringing storage out of their servers and into SANs (storage
area networks). But many don't have the expertise required to set up and run
enterprise-class SANs, according to HP. Thus the HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise
Virtual Array (EVA4400), a platform with eight drives and two controllers all
in one shelf that is designed to be discovered, configured and set up in less
than an hour.
The EVA4400 is available now and destined for the low end of the midrange market,
starting at a list price of US$15,000, said Kyle Fitze, director of marketing
in the SAN division of HP's StorageWorks group. These customers tend to have
about 1,000 employees, though some smaller enterprises may need this type of
gear if they use a lot of storage, he said. Medium-sized businesses often see
enterprise storage gear as too complex but need more than entry-level technology,
he said.
Consolidating drives and controllers in one shelf cuts costs, Fitze said. The
two controllers that manage the drives operate simultaneously and can keep the
system running if one fails. The array can be configured with drives ranging
from 146G bytes to 1T byte. Fully expanded on multiple shelves, the system can
support as much as 96T bytes of storage.
Also Tuesday, HP introduced a set of 8G-bps (bit-per-second) Fibre Channel
gear that can be used with the EVA4400. It delivers double the speed of the
4G-bps Fibre Channel technology now commonly used in SANs. The portfolio, including
a switch, a PCI Express host bus adapter and software, is available now for
$8,199.
Pattillo Construction uses an HP MSA1000 storage array that's about 6 years
old, said IT Director Buzz Kaas. The industrial park development and management
company in Stone Mountain, Georgia, has about 4T bytes of data, which is growing
as records such as architectural drawings and leases become digital, Kaas said.
He tested the EVA4400 and found he could install and set it up in about 10 minutes,
a process that would have taken overnight with the older array. Pattillo has
an IT staff of two and pays a consultant to manage the MSA1000. By contrast,
the staff could handle daily management of the EVA4400 by itself, Kaas said.
Like other storage vendors, HP recently has been trying to make high-end storage
easier to use so it can attract smaller customers, said IDC analyst Natalya
Yezhkova. Most midsize companies don't have storage specialists, and if they
buy advanced storage systems, they need to either get tools that simplify management
or hire additional staff, she said.
