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IT infrastructure giant Hewlett Packard contributed to a growing industry trend Dec. 4 when it introduced two new direct-attached storage products aimed at businesses that want to organize their data with an entry-level storage system.
According to researchers IDC, Enterprise Strategy Group and Gartner/Dataquest, more and more data storage companies are taking enterprise-level storage, archiving and data management functionality and moving it down the product line into smaller, less-expensive packages to attract small and midsize businesses and new business owners.
Entry-level storage systems priced below $15,000 make up the fastest-growing segment in the storage market, IDC has reported.
The new HP StorageWorks MSA60 and HP StorageWorks MSA70 use SAS (serial-attached SCSI) connectivity to augment the Palo Alto, Calif. companys entry-level MSA (Modular Smart Array) family.
The two systems offer flexible, tiered storage by supporting SAS and SATA (serial ATA) drives in the same enclosure. They also offer advanced data protection with a range of fail-safe configurations, including RAID 6 with Advanced Data Guarding to prevent downtime or data loss during upgrades or in the event of drive failure, HP product manager Charles Vallhonrat told eWEEK.
“The key goal for these products: First, make them easy to do; second, make them work well within a small form factor,” Vallhonrat said. “And we believe they are very affordable.”
HP is marketing the MSA60 and MSA70 at from $2,999 to $3,250 per enclosure, depending upon the functionality required, Vallhonrat said.
The MSA60 is a 2U disk drive enclosure designed to support 3.5-inch universal SAS or SATA drives for a maximum capacity of up to 3.6TB with 12 SAS drives or 9TB with 12 SATA drives.
It supports direct attach to HP ProLiant and Integrity servers and the cascading of enclosures in a 1+3 configuration, which allows customers to increase capacity as their storage needs grow, Vallhonrat said.
The MSA70 is a 2U disk drive storage enclosure supporting 2.5-inch SAS or SATA small form-factor drives for a maximum capacity of up to 3.6TB with 25 SAS drives or 1.5TB with 25 SATA drives.
It supports direct attach to ProLiant and Integrity servers and the cascading of enclosures in a 1+1 configuration.
HP recently shipped its 100,000th MSA unit—more entry-level disk arrays than any other vendor, Vallhonrat said.
The HP StorageWorks MSA60 is available now, while the MSA70 is expected to be available in the first half of 2007, Vallhonrat said.