eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Hewlett-Packard Co. storage customers will hear about several minor upgrades beginning next Tuesday at the companys ENSA@Work conference in Amsterdam, officials said.
The changes are all normal cycle upgrades and feature enhancements.
Entry-level customers will see improvements to the StorageWorks Modular SAN Array 1000, which now supports multi-cluster servers, and has capacity of 6TB, up from 3TB in prior versions, with 42 hot-swappable 146GB drives. It also now has a three-port embedded hub and concurrent server access, officials said.
The software for that is a free upgrade to existing users, officials said.
MSA 1000 is a legacy product of the former Compaq Computer Corp. Its native HP equivalent, StorageWorks Virtual Array 7110, now supports 45 of the 146GB drives, up from 15 in the existing version, for a total capacity of 6.5TB, up from just 1TB in the prior VA7100 model, officials said.
Many users still have Virtual Array hardware branded as Surestore, which was the umbrella product line name before last years HP-Compaq merger.
HP also will announce the certification for two of Broomfield, Colo.-based McData Corp. switches, the Intrepid 6140 and Sphereon 4500, branded as the StorageWorks Director 2/140 and StorageWorks Edge Switch 2/24, respectively. Both are 2G-bps switches; their secondary numbers are port counts.
In software, HP will announce Unix support for non-disruptive backup and remote mirroring, for the Oracle 9i database, along with a new technical blueprint for managing long-distance replication of the Oracle Corp. product on HP storage products. Other software updates include StorageWorks Rapid Restore for Exchange 2000 and StorageWorks Secure Path 4.0 for Windows Workgroup Edition, officials said.
Seperately, on Monday, HP partner Seagate Removable Storage Solutions LLC, of Costa Mesa, Calif., will announce its next-generation Digital Data Storage tapes, a spokesman said, declining to state further details.
Current DDS-4 tapes use 20GB cartridges but are slow, streaming data at approximately 3MBps. “Its a very low-end product, but it has a very large, actually very broad market base, in terms of entry-level server backup,” noted tape consultant Bob Abraham, of Freeman Reports, in Ojai, Calif. Past projections of DDS phasing out were too aggressive, he said.
Pricing and availability for the various upgrades is not yet announced.
Speakers at the conference, named for Palo Alto, Calif.-based HPs Enterprise Network Storage Architecture campaign, include Carly Fiorina, chairman and CEO; Peter Blackmore, executive vice president, enterprise systems group; and Howard Elias, senior vice president and general manager, network storage solutions.
Users will also hear Greg Reyes, chairman and CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based storage switch maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc., and Bob Muglia, senior vice president, enterprise storage division, of Redmond, Wash.s Microsoft Corp.