Dell Computer Corp. on Monday began shipping a hardware/software bundle to make its network-attached storage connect to its co-branded EMC Corp. storage-area networks, officials said.
Dells PowerVault NAS servers, based on Microsoft Corp.s Server Appliance Kit 2.0, can now be managed by—and share files with—EMCs mid-range Clariion SANs, certain models of which Dell resells and will soon manufacture.
The bundle does not have a name, said Matthew Brisse, lead product manager for Dell/EMC products at Dell, in Round Rock, Texas. It includes one to four host bus adapters from the users choice of QLogic Corp. or Emulex Corp., and the Navisphere software for features like logical unit numbering (LUN) mapping, HBA failover, and host-based mirroring.
The mirroring functionality comes from Network Specialists Inc., also known as NSI Software. NSI in the future will add tighter automation to its remote version of the mirroring, a spokesman with the Hoboken, N.J., company said.
Besides enabling the SCSI-based NAS to connect to Fibre Channel direct-attached storage and to a SAN from Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, the bundle comes with Dells installation service, Brisse said. It costs from $4,000 to $10,000, depending on the HBA configuration, he said.
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