The mediocre performance and high price of HP's StorageWorks NAS B3000 underwhelmed us. The B3000 uses common HP server hardware, customized with a slick front panel. The main unit is connected to HP's MSA1000 Storage Array by a single 2-Gbps Fibre Channel connection. That array comes with a small FC switch embedded in the backplane and is a full external RAID array with Ultra320 SCSI drives. You can scale the B3000 to an impressive 48 TB--the largest among the devices we tested--using the MSA1000 Storage Arrays.
The head unit is loaded with a 2.8-GHz Intel Xeon processor and 2 GB of RAM. Network connectivity is provided by two copper Gigabit Ethernet interfaces on their own PCI-X bus integrated onto the motherboard. These Gigabit Ethernet interfaces can be teamed for load balancing and failover. Software for that function comes preloaded on the B3000. There are two 100-MHz PCI-X slots and a 133-MHz PCI-X slot. This unit also comes with HP's well-designed iLO (integrated Lights Out) management solution, an out-of-band remote access card that allows access to the server even when the server operating system isn't loading.
In testing, the StorageWorks NAS B3000 exhibited only average performance. It won only the CIFS IOps test and managed to place in a couple of others, but overall performance was unimpressive. As with Dell's Windows-powered NAS, the B3000 had difficulty with the NFS tests.
The interface is that of an HP-customized Windows SAK box. It's easy to use, clean and offers the option of simply starting a terminal services session to access the desktop directly. HP uses CDP Persistent Storage Manager to provide up to 256 snapshots with flexible scheduling. HP gives you a taste of its HP NAS Data Copy with a 30-day trial for remote mirroring/
replication. Of course, the B3000 integrates with ADS as seamlessly as any other Windows server for authentication and security.
The B3000 comes with a three-year, next-day, on-site warranty.
HP StorageWorks NAS B3000, Hewlett-Packard Corp. (650) 857-5518, (800) 888-9909. www.hp.com
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The mediocre performance and high price of HP's StorageWorks NAS B3000 underwhelmed us. The B3000 uses common HP server hardware, customized with a slick front panel. The main unit is connected to HP's MSA1000 Storage Array by a single 2-Gbps Fibre Channel connection. That array comes with a small FC switch embedded in the backplane and is a full external RAID array with Ultra320 SCSI drives. You can scale the B3000 to an impressive 48 TB--the largest among the devices we tested--using the MSA1000 Storage Arrays. 
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