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HP Kisses NAS, Nods to iSCSI: Page 2 of 3

For the same reason, HP won't sell iSCSI-optimized adapters, which offload TCP processing from host processors. "On the server side, depending on the performance you want, TCP acceleration is a good thing but not absolutely required," says Nagaitis. According to HP's internal testing [ed. note: grain-of-salt alert!], the SR2122 provides aggregate throughput of 140 MByte/s.

"Obviously, this is not the highest-performance solution," Nagaitis says. "As soon as customers start talking about performance, we tell them to plug directly into the Fibre Channel SAN."

HP is positioning the FC-to-iSCSI router as a way to consolidate storage and centralize backup, without requiring a customer to buy Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs). The SR2122, available now, has a list price of $9,995 -- which, we should point out, would buy you at least 10 FC HBAs. An HP spokeswoman says that's not the point, though: The router is not intended to be an alternative to HBAs; rather, it's "a way to extend the SAN across stranded servers where FC was not feasible in the past."

HP says the router has been qualified for Intel Corp.-based servers, including HP's ProLiant BL blade servers, as well as its StorageWorks Modular SAN Array (MSA) 1000 and Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) systems; and backup applications including those from Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) and Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA).

Meanwhile, HP has cranked up its NAS lineup -- which the company is calling version 2 -- and is able to promise better performance at lower starting prices. The upgraded NAS boxes move to Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz processors, which helps boost performance 25 percent, HP claims.