Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Networking equipment
Bronze Award:
Hewlett-Packard StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) 1000 Small Business SAN Kit
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. says its StorageWorks MSA1000 Small Business SAN Kit is "the simplest SAN on the planet." And there's no hyperbole in that advertising slogan -- it's easy to buy, install, manage and upgrade. Geared to small businesses or enterprise remote offices, this SAN-in-a-box is an FC storage system that consists of an HP 2 Gb FC disk array, two QLogic SANblade HBAs, an 8-port FC QLogic SANbox switch and Microsoft SAN management software. Once the components are connected (color-coordinated cables ease the assembly and a software wizard guides the user through the setup), HP claims it takes only 25 mouse clicks to get the $9,999 (street price) SAN up and running "in a matter of minutes."
Don't get the impression that StorageWorks MSA1000 Small Business SAN Kit isn't a sophisticated and expandable SAN. It can scale to 12.6 TB using 42 300 GB disks in a 10U rack. All configuration, management and partitioning software comes standard at no extra charge. The array supports hot-plug drives, controllers, fans and power supplies. Its RAID Advanced Data Guarding (ADG) provides a much greater level of fault tolerance than RAID-5, allowing two simultaneous drive failures without downtime or data loss. StorageWorks MSA1000 Small Business SAN Kit supports Windows 2000/2003 32-bit and Linux 32-bit operating systems. It's nice to see three companies get together to produce a powerful, yet easy to use, SAN.