Enterprise Storage Group Inc. analyst Peter Gerr says the offering makes sense: This is a good tool for consolidating. Its great for reining in a lot of orphan systems out there.
And since the new appliances run on the same operating system as all of NetApps high-end filers, customers can scale up from the FAS250 to the 270 and all the way up to the companys FAS900 filer series by simply replacing the controller, Vasudevan claims. They can enter through the 250, but can scale all the way through to our high-end filers, he says. This enhances our ability to penetrate remote locations better than weve done in the past.
In addition to filling out NetApps entry-level portfolio, the company hopes the new appliances will help extend its reach into the SAN market. The FAS250, which NetApp says already has several dozen customers, is designed for both NAS and iSCSI SAN environments, according to Vasudevan. The FAS 270, meanwhile, which is expected to start shipping in a couple months, will also work in Fibre Channel SAN environments.
NetApp is also extending its overall SAN support to include Linux, HP-UX, and AIX drivers, in addition to its current support for Solaris and Windows. The companys SAN customers will be able to purchase an attach kit for each of the new SAN environments in a couple of months. Vasudevan says the kits will cost less than $10,000 each, but points out that the final price could be significantly higher, depending on whether or not a company needs to buy new filers or make other changes to its infrastructure.
This is about penetrating the mainstream data center further, he says.
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