Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
This article can also be found in the Premium Editorial Download "Storage magazine: The 15 top storage products of 2004."
Download it now to read this article plus other related content.
And while you're at it, imagine it being inexpensive, too. Say, $13, $14 or $16 per gigabyte for the whole thing--disk, SAN management software and network connections.
The makers of a variety of small, self-contained SAN products, sometimes called "SAN-in-a-box," believe they're delivering that kind of bulletproof, anybody-can-deploy-it SAN. The products differ: some sport Fibre Channel (FC) ports, a few are strictly iSCSI, some use SATA arrays, while others don't care what kind of disks inhabit the storage array. There's also another class of array products that are not exactly "in a box," but are extremely easy to deploy. What they have in common is a relatively low price tag, easy deployment (sometimes in less than a hour) and the promise that they'll run with almost no attention.
"They typically connect less than eight servers. Often, the HBA [host bus adapter] is inside the box," says Bob Passmore, research vice president, Gartner Inc., Stamford, CT.
Although Gartner doesn't track these self-contained SANs as a category, Passmore identified a number of vendors with products that
Requires Free Membership to View
could fit such a category. These include EqualLogic Inc., Nashua, NH; Intransa Inc., San Jose, CA; LeftHand Networks Inc., Boulder, CO; and Winchester Systems Inc., Burlington, MA, which actually refers to some of its FlashDisk array configurations as SAN-In-A-Box (see A sampling of self-contained SAN products). In general, these products are souped-up disk arrays with redundant components, IP and/or FC ports, and some combination of SCSI, FC or SATA disks.
In addition to the switching capability, HBAs and disk arrays, these products typically include some type of SAN virtualization software, simplified management capabilities and even some sophisticated storage features, such as snapshots or replication.
"These products are all about packaging and integration. The vendor needs to put all the necessary components together, make sure they work and then add an easy GUI," says Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner at Data Mobility Group LLC in Nashua, NH.
Several big-name storage vendors are jumping on the SAN-in-a-box bandwagon. "[Hewlett-Packard] has had entry-level SAN configurations for a long time and the small entry-level EMC Clariion array could be configured as a SAN-in-a-box if they wanted to add switching capability," says Gartner's Passmore. EMC Corp. and Dell Inc. have teamed to offer a SAN starter kit with a QLogic Corp. HBA built in. Still missing at this point is the integrated switching and easy-to-use configuration software.
Late in October 2004, HP joined QLogic to introduce the HP StorageWorks MSA 1000 Small Business SAN Starter Kit, which includes a QLogic switch, HBA and SAN software integrated into a StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1000 disk system. It will come with all-in-one pricing and packaging, along with a SAN setup wizard that lets non-experts install the entire SAN in minutes. The base price of $9,999 doesn't include any disk. Depending on the amount of disk capacity, pricing starts at approximately $12,000 and climbs as you add disk to its 12TB ceiling.
"The software is the key piece," says Frank Berry, QLogic's vice president, corporate marketing. "It will discover and configure automatically. You just have to hit 'next, next, next.' You don't even need to type in an IP address or the HBA worldwide name number," he adds.
Targeting SMBs
These products are designed to appeal to small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as to small units of large enterprises. "Small companies don't want to send someone to switch school," says McAdam, adding that since one vendor sells the SAN there's no finger-pointing between vendors if something goes wrong.
When Greater Media Inc. of Boston--a group of radio stations and publishing operations--found itself running out of room on its sole Windows Exchange 2000 server with direct-attached storage (DAS), it decided to upgrade its server and storage infrastructure. It explored a variety of options and ended up with Winchester Systems' FlashDisk OpenSAN FX-600, which is a self-contained SAN. "We looked at EMC and an entry-level HP SAN, but the price points were way too high and they were over-engineered for our needs," says Robby Mossman, director of information technology.
The company bought a two-server cluster and the FX-600 array with a little more than 1TB of storage capacity. It comes with redundant controllers and a redundant power source. Greater Media required redundant paths for its two servers for high availability, for which it needed multipathing software from Veritas Software Corp. Winchester Systems certified the Veritas product.
"The HP product didn't have the growth potential. Winchester had the growth of EMC, but for a lot less cost," says Mossman, citing Winchester's ability to scale to dozens of terabytes. The company paid less than $50,000 for the FX-600 with 1TB of storage, consisting of a mix of high-performance SCSI disk and low-cost SATA disk, dual controllers and eight ports. A three-year extended warranty and a cold spares kit were also included in the price. The Veritas multipath software license added another few hundred dollars to the price. The final cost of the entire infrastructure upgrade was about $100,000, including servers, Microsoft software, the SAN and a tape drive.
This was first published in January 2005
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation