Hewlett-Packard has announced a package of product updates that
include a new preassembled bundle of its EVA arrays and PolyServe
Inc.'s clustered filesystem gateway, a rebranding of Cisco Systems
Inc.'s blade switch, a refresh of the DL585 network attached
storage (NAS) system and the addition of encryption to its Data
Protector backup product.
"It's an incremental announcement," said Arun Taneja, founder
and analyst with the Taneja Group. For example, he noted, PolyServe
and HP have had a long-standing partnership, and the new bundle,
which will be available on March 1, is no different technically
than the ones users can already assemble themselves with the two
products purchased separately.
However, Taneja said, the bundle, which will be connected,
optimized and tested in the HP factory, will probably be very
useful for customers looking to deploy the system, regardless of
the fact that the technology is not new.
"It may sound trivial, but clustered file systems are inherently
more difficult to understand and deploy than regular NAS boxes,"
Taneja said, describing them as "designed by nerds for nerds."
The bundle will package a two-node NAS cluster from PolyServe
with the EVA4000, EVA6000 or EVA8000 for a starting price of
$90,000. The cost isn't substantially lower -- the company lists
the price at about 14% lower than buying separately. "It's really
more of an impact on customer's time," said Harry Baeverstad,
director of NAS at HP.
Taneja said that the time factor could have an impact on the
product's appeal. "When PolyServe first started, it took them a
while to realize that they needed to do things to make their
product more appealing for the mass market until they dressed
things up as an 'out-of-the-box' NAS experience," he said. "HP may
see similar results with this."
The package provides some level of file virtualization, as the
clustered NAS heads share a filesystem and present a filesystem
interface over a block back end, Taneja said. But where HP needs to
catch up to its competitors is with virtualizing existing NAS
systems, he said.
"Right now, HP has no good way of virtualizing individual,
existing NAS boxes, even if they're all HP," Taneja said, comparing
HP's offerings to those of EMC Corp., which has a file
virtualization product from its acquisition of Rainfinity Inc. in
2005, and Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp), which licenses its
Virtual File Manager (VFM) from NuView Systems Inc. NuView was
acquired last year by Brocade Communications Systems Inc.
HP's ultimate virtualization direction unclear
Also on the NAS front, HP has introduced the ProLiant DL585 G2
Storage Server, a second version of its DL585 Windows NAS gateway,
which adds AMD 64-bit dual-core Opteron processors and has updated
software based on Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 (WUDS).
Dell Inc. is selling WUDS as a full NAS/IP SAN box with SAS disks
included, but HP will be offering it as an iSCSI and NAS
connectivity option, and leaving the full-fledged multiprotocol
storage capabilities to its All-in-One entry-level system announced
last September. The DL575 G2 Storage Server will be available on
Feb. 12 at a list price of $18,687.
"What's interesting to me about this announcement in general is
that it involves a lot of investment in products as gateways to
fill in the gaps in their product portfolio," said Dianne McAdam,
analyst with the Clipper Group.
But when it comes to storage virtualization, McAdam said, "I
will be more interested to see how HP's ultimate virtualization
strategy will play out" beyond gateways. There has been some talk
about HP working to integrate server and storage management in
general, and McAdam said that could have interesting implications
for virtualization if it works out.
HP has also partnered with Hitachi Data Systems and rebranded
its NSC55 diskless storage controller as the HP Storage
Virtualization System (SVS200). The product isn't exactly
network-based virtualization, but without disks included, the
controller performs the same function as multivendor arrays for
heterogeneous data migration between systems.
Meanwhile, HP has also announced a "blade everything" strategy
and the goal of creating what it calls the adaptive infrastructure.
"HP StorageWorks is devoting more effort to technologies that
deliver integrated virtualization and is working with the rest of
HP to deliver the adaptive infrastructure, which will provide
complete IT utility virtualization," the company wrote in one of
its whitepapers. The company was one of the first into the storage
virtualization fray with a product called HP Continuous Access
Storage Appliance, which came from its acquisition of StorageApps
in 2001. But the product never went anywhere because EMC sued and
won a patent infringement case against the technology.
"There's a lot HP still needs to do," Taneja said. "They're not
quite as solid as they could be on their overall storage
virtualization program yet."
Encryption within Data Protector, Cisco blade switch
On the heels of a recent announcement by Symantec Corp. that it
has added encryption to its NetBackup product, with this release HP
also added the option of AES 256-bit encryption within its Data
Protector backup software.
The encryption option that HP said was developed internally, is
software based, which typically has more of an effect on
performance than hardware-based approaches. Baeverstad acknowledged
that the performance hit is estimated at about 5% to 10% per
server.
The option encrypts data over the wire between the backup server
and tape backup targets, as well as while it's stored on tape.
Hardware-based appliances, such as NetApp subsidiary Decru Inc.'s
DataFort, can be used to encrypt data on primary storage, as well
as in the backup infrastructure, but are far more expensive than
HP's backup software module, which is priced at $2,950 for a
10-client license and at $490 for each individual client. The
option will be available in February 2007.
Rounding out the product announcements from HP is the Cisco MDS
9124e Fabric Switch for HP c-Class BladeSystem, a joint offering
with Cisco of a fabric switch that plugs directly into the
BladeSystem chassis without requiring individual connections to
each blade. "Previously, there has been lots of cabling and wiring
involved with blade switches, which almost defeats the purpose of
the BladeSystem," Baeverstad said.
The 9124e is compatible with Cisco's MDS9000 series directors
and also can be managed using HP's ProLiant Essentials, Server
Essentials and Storage Essentials software with this integration.
The product will be available March 1; estimated list price is
$5,999 for a 12-port model and $9,500 for a 24-port version.