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SANs Made E-Z
A gang of vendors package up ready-made SANs
October 19, 2001
2 Min Read
A group of leading storage vendors are set to announce an alliance at Storage Networking World in Orlando, Fla., next week that will target small and medium-sized companies with "SAN-in-a-box" bundles of hardware and software.
According to press material leaked to Byte and Switch by analysts, the group, which calls itself the Open Storage Management Resources (OSMR) program, includes BakBone Software Inc. (Toronto: BKB), Chaparral Network Storage Inc., FalconStor Software Inc. (Nasdaq: FALC), Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), JMR Electronics, JNI Corp. (Nasdaq: JNIC), OTG Software, Sanbolic Inc., and
Vixel Corp. (Nasdaq: VIXL).
The first SAN package available through the program, “E-Z SAN,” provides up to 1.1 terabytes of storage capacity and will be demonstrated at the show.
Customers can purchase pre-certified and tested hardware in "bundle" form and then choose which software vendors’ products to deploy for storage virtualization, auto-backup/restore, and volume management.
Here’s what's included in the menu:
BakBone’s NetVault backup/restore software
Chaparral’s 2-Gbit Fibre Channel-to-Ultra 160 SCSI JFS224 RAID controller
FalconStor’s flagship software solution, IPStor
Hitachi’s 73GB 10,000RPM U160 Disk Drive
JMR’s FORTRA 10 RAID subsystem
JNI’s 64-bit single-port PCI-to-Fibre Channel host bus adapter (33 MHz), FCE-6410
OTG’s DiskXtender 2000 and SANXtender storage virtualization and file management software
Sanbolic’s advanced volume sharing software, Kayo
Qlogic's 64-bit dual-port PCI-Fibre Channel HBA (33MHz)
Vixel’s 16-port 7200 Fibre Channel switchAnalysts like the idea. “Solutions that are hassle-free and avoid the lock-in of proprietary alternatives are a big move in the right direction,” says John McArthur, group VP of storage research at IDC.
But there's a downside, too: To which company do buyers of SAN-in-a-box solutions turn when things go wrong? None of the vendors in the alliance mention any kind of support with this package. Of course, this issue might be addressed via third parties, although the details remain to be seen.
The E-Z SAN bundle will be sold through Bell Microproducts' network of resellers, starting at $30,000.
— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch http://www.byteandswitch.com
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