Presto, Storage!

In some cases, the new storage capabilities are enabling more than just easier and less costly storage and backup chores. In the case of EOB One, a financial analysis service provider to the health care industry in Palo Alto, Calif., a new network storage system is allowing the small startup to provision storage at several sites around the country and retain customer data indefinitely. Previously, EOB One was using a Dell/EMC RAID array holding between 2.5TB and 3TB. "We could have added a bunch of Dell/EMC stuff, which would have been very expensive," said Sharad Patel, president of EOB One.

Another option would have been to call on a storage service provider, such as IBM and its on-demand service. But Patel said the cost of Bell Microproducts Hammer Z-Box SOIP (storage over IP) appliance was more attractive. "Youre better off buying a box now, compared with using IBM or other services," said Patel.

Patel chose to deploy several Hammer Z-Box SOIP appliances. With only six employees, EOB One has little room on its payroll for a storage specialist, one reason Patel was attracted to the Hammer Z-Box, which he found very easy to use. Over the summer, Patel deployed the first Hammer Z-Box, which he was able to do in about 15 minutes without the aid of a network administrator. "Managing the drives and storage is very straightforward," said Patel.

Now Patel uses the Dell/EMC storage servers to back up some of the data in the primary Bell Microproducts system, which holds about 8TB. The rest is backed up on a second Hammer Z-Box. "Were saving about $30,000 in capital expense. Over time, we will save more money because the cost of operation is less," said Patel. "We retain the data as long as you remain a customer."

But among all users surveyed by eWEEK, the power to dramatically improve backup and recovery loomed as perhaps the single-biggest attraction of the new network storage systems. That was the case for the Contra Costa Water District, in Concord, Calif., the primary drinking water provider for about a half-million people in Contra Costa County.

Jim Morton, IS manager for the water district, was seeking a resilient backup implementation. Faced with high costs of DAS and scared off by the high cost of an FC SAN, Morton first purchased an iSCSI product made by StoneFly but turned to an iSCSI product from EqualLogic in October 2005.

Now, he has set up one storage network in the organizations primary facility and another elsewhere on the companys campus for backup. "We have a campus that has seven buildings on it. We have an emergency operations component where another building at the opposite end of the campus has rooms and electricity to run our data center. That building has emergency generators and was built to survive an earthquake," said Morton.

With the need to store customer records, financial records, operations databases, a mapping system and a pipe distribution system, Morton identified the strategic systems that were necessary to recover rapidly.

"We wanted to centralize storage, and iSCSI afforded us a way to remove some costs and replicate the exact same configuration at the backup site. It would take us less than 10 minutes to bring a duplicate of our Microsoft Exchange server online," said Morton. The shortened recovery time works out to a savings of about $50,000 per incident, while the ability to replicate data saves about $8,000 per year in tape purchases, he said.

"I was skeptical of iSCSI, but its very reliable. It gets you into managed storage at a pretty good price point," said Morton.

While few smaller enterprises can afford to run a backup operation separated by hundreds of miles from their main IT operations, the ability to run backup equipment off-site is opening up new horizons for some. Dwight Bailey, director of museum technology at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, is using the recently announced EMC Clariion AX150 and implementing backup on another AX150 at another building on the other side of the universitys campus.

"We wanted enterprise-level features without spending enterprise money. ... If the source goes down, the failover automatically sends data to the target. It should be in seconds," said Bailey, who is planning eventually to replicate data at a remote site in Atlanta.

Big storage for little guys
Some storage products aimed at SMBs that have been introduced in recent months.
Vendor— Product
Adaptec— Snap Server 520
Bell Microproducts— Hammer Z-Box
Brocade— iSCSI Gateway
Compellent— Storage Center 3.5 EMC/Dell— Clariion AX150
EqualLogic— PeerStorage PS200E
Hewlett-Packard— StorageWorks All-in-One
IBM System Storage— N7000
Network Appliance— StoreVault S500
Overland Storage— Arcvault
Pillar Data Systems— Axiom One

Senior Writer Chris Preimesberger contributed to this report.

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