Network Appliance Offers Up Flexible Storage
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The vendor adds features to its storage appliance to quickly bring back online storage that had been dedicated to an underused application.
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As small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) save more data and rely on it more, they are turning to networked storage even under the burden of limited budgets and IT expertise.Regulatory requirements, more sophisticated applications and reliance on Web-based supply chains all are forcing small businesses to collect and store more information, according to IDC analyst Rick Villars. They may not have enough data to fill an enterprise-class storage system today, but they want systems that let them add more capacity as they grow, he said.EMC is aiming at this growing market with its Clariion AX4, a platform that can scale from a few terabytes of storage to 60TB and take advantage of many advanced EMC storage management applications designed for large enterprises. The company was set to announce and ship it Tuesday.Swervepoint, a provider of promotional gifts in Middleton, Mass., has less than 1TB of data between its two locations but wants to be able to add storage capacity without buying new servers.&quot;We should buy our servers for the server qualities and buy storage for our server needs,&quot; said Kevin Phoenix, principal in charge of operations and administration.The 15-employee company&#39;s main concerns about networked storage are cost and complexity, and the AX4 eased those worries, Phoenix said. Swervepoint, which counts EMC as one of its own clients, has been a beta tester of the AX4 and purchased a unit. It came with management software that was easy to use, said Phoenix, who said he handles IT for the company but is not an IT specialist.The AX4 comes with at least 3TB of storage and can be expanded by stringing together as many as five systems with 12 drives each. Each AX4 can be ordered with either a Fibre Channel or a iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) connection, meeting demand for IP (Internet Protocol) connectivity among SMBs, according to Barry Ader, senior director of Clariion marketing at EMC. Smaller companies tend not to have expertise with Fibre Channel, which is typically used in large enterprises, he said. On the AX4, there is no price difference between the two interface options.The systems will come with 750GB drives at first, but 1TB drives will be available starting in March, opening the door to the AX4&#39;s top-end storage capacity of 60TB, Ader said. Within the full AX4 system and even within each enclosure, users can mix and match SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives. Companies can use management tools including snapshot, failover, business continuity and Microsoft Exchange replication capability with the AX4.By mixing SAS and SATA drives, users can set up a tiered storage system in which the more critical data is on better-performing, more expensive SAS drives and less critical on lower-performance SATA disks, said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT. Support for enterprise-class software is another benefit of the AX4, which goes up against SMB storage products from competitors including Network Appliance and Equalogic, King said. In particular, its support for virtualization software from EMC&#39;s VMware subsidiary appears to be stronger than in competing products, King said.
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(Source: Computerworld)  When it comes to storage systems, small and medium-sized businesses have had their share of challenges. Even when some storage vendors have tried to address the unique needs of the SMBs, it has been with underpowered versions of their enterprise-class products. The advent of unified network storage, exemplified by the DellTM PowerVaultTM NX1950, has dramatically altered the SMB landscape by combining iSCSI and NAS capabilities in a single, highly functional package that delivers simplified management and enhanced scalability at a cost-efficient price point.
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Here are 10 storage utilities you can download and start using to manage your storage-area network (SAN), deploy network-attached storage (NAS) or monitor and assess the privacy of your network.
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InfoWorld - Quantum introduced a disk storage appliance Monday that could both appeal to enterprise customers and improve its partnerships with other storage vendors.
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A Linux developer has come up with a virtualized I/O system that allows competing virtualization software to use one mechanism for handling storage and other virtual devices.
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Device features two optical drives and a 160GB hard drive for storing content.
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Company backs 128-bit encryption, support for home LANs
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DELL has teamed up with Microsoft to offer two new storage products which it claims offer better performance at affordable pricing.
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Storage Expo Do you want a SAN or a SANity check?
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The new monthly Web hosting service for small and medium sized businesses provides unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth.
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Symantec has added disk-backup capability to its NetBackup software.
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Iomega on Friday introduced a new network-attached storage appliance for Windows networks in small and midsized businesses. The Iomega NAS 400r incorporates Serial ATA drives and uses Microsoft&#39;s Windows Storage Server 2003 technology.
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Fujitsu Siemens readies storage area network bundle for small businesses.
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Partitioning an array and/or a storage network may not be enough to satisfy air-gap sensitive users.
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(Source: Network Appliance)  This technical report discusses the virtual storage solutions that reduce cost, increase storage utilization, increase fault tolerance, and address the challenges of backing up and restoring VMware ESX Server environments by using NetApp technologies.
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Enterprises are reaching deeper into their pockets to add data storage capacity to their computer networks, according to an industry report released Friday.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.