Compaq readies terabyte-scale storage
Network-attached storage devices might sound a lot like storage area networks, but 'a lot of vendors are very religious about NAS and SAN,' said Mary T. McDowell, vice president and general manager of Compaq Computer Corp.'s industry-standard server group.
By Patricia DaukantasGCN StaffNetwork-attached storage devices might sound a lot like storage area networks, but 'a lot of vendors are very religious about NAS and SAN,' said Mary T. McDowell, vice president and general manager of Compaq Computer Corp.'s industry-standard server group.'You are either all for SAN or all for NAS,' she said. 'Compaq believes there is room for both architectures in customer environments.'To maintain a balance between the two camps, Compaq recently announced a NAS device that scales up to 1T as well as a SAN that holds up to 4T.The TaskSmart N2400 NAS appliance is the first such high-performance device based on industry-standard components, McDowell said. It has two 733-MHz Pentium III processors with 1G of synchronous dynamic RAM.The rackmount device borrows features from Compaq's StorageWorks products, including snapshots for fast data backup and online volume growth for extending disk volumes under Microsoft Windows 2000 without rebooting.The operating system is a version of Win 2000 customized by Compaq and Microsoft Corp. engineers.The device works with Windows 9x, NT, Win 2000, Linux and Unix clients through the Common Internet File System and Network File System file-sharing protocols.It runs Compaq Insight Manager system management software and storage products from Legato Systems Inc. and Veritas Software Corp., both of Mountain View, Calif.Compaq's other new product, the StorageWorks RAID Array 4100, is an open SAN system, said Ron Noblett, vice president of Compaq's server storage business unit.Compaq and IBM Corp. announced in July they would collaborate to make their storage products interoperable and would support open industry standards for the components that make up SANs.The RAID Array 4100 SAN has 'the economics and simplicity of direct attached storage that people have been deploying for a long time now' but with added SAN benefits, Noblett said.The storage device can be configured to handle up to 4T of data and is compatible with many network operating systems, including NT, Win 2000, Linux, Novell NetWare and SCO UnixWare from Santa Cruz Operation Inc. of Santa Cruz, Calif.The 4100 has Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop switches; support for RAID levels 0, 0+1, 4 and 5; hot-pluggable 36.4G drives; and StorageWorks Virtual Replicator software.The TaskSmart N2400 NAS appliance starts at $34,740 for a 72G configuration. The StorageWorks RAID Array 4100 SAN starts at $19,800 for a 218G model.
Open SAN works with leading network operating systems
First of its kind
RAID levels
Contact Compaq at 800-727-5472.
 | Compaq's TaskSmart network-attached storage device has two 733-MHz Pentium III processors and scales up to 1T. |
First of its kind
RAID levels
Contact Compaq at 800-727-5472.