ORLANDO, Fla. -- Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp. and QLogic Corp. announced at Storage Networking World an entry-level SAN for small businesses that can be installed in less than an hour.
The SAN-in-a-box comes with color-coded cables, a wizard-driven setup program, an HP disk array, two QLogic HBAs, and an eight-port Fibre Channel switch. The HP StorageWorks MSA 1000 kit will be available Nov. 1 and will cost less than $10,000.
The product takes about 24 mouse clicks to be up and running, according to Kyle Fitze, director of marketing for HP's storage area network division. The SAN for beginners can scale up to 12 TB and is aimed at the $79 million SMB (small and medium-sized business) market where two-thirds of the companies still use direct-attached storage.
The starter SAN relies on Microsoft's operating system, which provides storage applications. Rahul Auradkar, Microsoft's director of the Windows server division, said, "We're working to make Windows the best storage platform."
Nancy Hurley, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass. said the HP StorageWorks MSA 1000 small business SAN is a "revolutionary improvement in SAN ease of use that will help make SANs accessible to a new class of users."
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