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NAS in a 'Snap'

The Snap Appliances division of Quantum Corp. this week started commmercial shipment of a small network attached storage (NAS) filer, highlighting a key trend in workgroup gear.

The Snap Server 12000 features just under a terabyte of storage, putting it in the low- to mid-range section of this market. Snap expects the 12000 to appeal to workgroups of 300 to 400 people (see Snap Boosts Support, Capacities).

At $15,000 retail, the 12000 costs about 1.6 cents per megabyte of storage, since the filer has 960 gigabytes of capacity in a unit that fits in a standard 19-inch rack. Features include hot-swappable fans and power supplies; RAID 5, 1, and 0; and remote monitoring and management abilities. Snap uses its own Unix-derived operating system.

Snap also is increasing storage capacity while slashing the price per megabyte on its cheaper products. The vendor has upgraded its 20-gigabyte Snap Server 1000 to 40 gigabytes and its 40-gigabyte offering to 80 gigabytes. At a suggested retail price of $800, the latter model is down to a penny per megabyte.

Snap's moves reflect a trend toward falling prices and increased capacity across smaller NAS units. Analysts say this bodes well for small businesses and workgroups in larger organizations.

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