Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

First-Class NAS: Page 5 of 18

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.