Network Appliance Inc.'s (NetApp) StoreVault division has just
added a new
iSCSI storage area network (SAN) and network
attached storage (NAS) box to its product line, the StoreVault
S300, with a starting price of $3,000.
The S300 is a smaller version of the first StoreVault box, the
S500. The major differences are the S500 scales to 6 TB and
supports Fibre Channel along with iSCSI and CIFS or NFS. The S300
scales to 4 TB and offers no Fibre Channel option. The S500 also
has a higher starting list price than the S300 at $5,535. Both
StorVault models run a scaled-down version of NetApp's OnTap
operating system, which includes data protection features such as
snapshots and asynchronous replication.
According to Sajai Krishnan, general manager of the small and
medium-sized business (SMB) unit at NetApp, the StoreVault boxes
contain fewer feature options than NetApp's enterprise filers. For
example, the S500 and S300 allow asynchronous replication only,
while enterprise filers allow for multiple flavors of asynchronous
and synchronous replication. The StoreVault products also run
StoreVault Manager, a layer of software that adds setup wizards and
other features for less-expert storage users.
Daniel Covell, owner of the Covell Group, manages IT for several
SMB clients, including floral wholesaler Mellano and Co., which
currently stores 2.5 TB of Exchange data, financial application
data and disk-based backup for five locations on the S500 managed
by Covell. He said that the chief benefits to StoreVault so far are
the support from a big organization, like NetApp, and price.
"I've worked with other [low-end] systems where I've had a lot
of iSCSI connectivity errors and support doesn't really follow up,"
he said. "StoreVault support has been very responsive." At the same
time, he said, StoreVault boxes haven't given him many issues. "The
only time I've had to reboot the S500 in the last 120 days was when
I had to power it down to move some cables around in the rack," he
said.
Covell has been beta testing the S300 for storing clients' data
as he begins offering application hosting services in addition to
IT management services. There, cost will be a key factor, which
will make the lower price tag on the S300 welcome. He said the list
price on the bigger S500 usually jumps to around $13,000 when more
features are added. The S3000 will often cost more than the base
system, too, but is still less than the S500. "I'm seeing the S300
at around $7,000 street price," he said. "For some of my customers,
buying a new server for $2,000 is a huge expense -- I need to be
able to offer a wide variety of cost options for them."
The price tag on the S300 also has Covell considering using it
to replace Windows file servers in some instances. "Depending on
the server, the S300 could be cheaper than buying the server
hardware, OS license and disk separately," he said. "You don't have
to deal with some of the maintenance that comes with servers,
things like OS patches and antivirus software, so the management
overhead could be lower, as well."
For now, Covell said his only quibble is with the setup wizards
in StoreVault manager. ISCSI connectivity for servers is easy to
set up the first time around through a wizard, he said, but adding
new ones later manually is sometimes a trickier proposition. "If
I'm not connected to the network yet, but I have the initiator
name, I'd like to have StoreVault be able to see it as soon as I
power the server up," he said. "It would be just one less step I'd
have to go through for setup."
NetApp is hoping the continuity of features between the small
models and bigger systems will boost its sales at the low end of
the market. "NetApp doesn't just take a watered-down product and
slap a badge on it," Krishnan said. StoreVault is also being
marketed to NetApp's existing enterprise customer base as storage
for remote and branch offices; its replication will work with any
of the larger filers in NetApp's product line.
One enterprise user, director of operations for a large
Midwestern application service provider, who asked that neither he
nor his company be named, said his company has several S500s in
remote offices or set up for project work. "The interface isn't
quite the same [as NetApp's larger systems], but it's very cost
effective for smaller projects that don't need all the extra bells
and whistles," he said. The company uses it primarily in smaller
data processing centers where both Windows and Linux hosts need to
connect to cheaper storage because the box can connect using both
CIFS and NFS, a rarity in the SMB market. However, this user said
the S300 is probably too small for his purposes.
NetApp began a new campaign to push its products lower in the
market following a $61 million revenue shortfall in the second
quarter of this year that in part was blamed on slowing high-end
sales. "It's not like we haven't been selling midsize products at
all, it just hasn't been a focus for us," said Tom Georgens,
executive vice president of product operations, at the release of
the
FAS2000, the long-overdue replacement for
NetApp's midrange FAS200 products. NetApp is working on new
incentives for its channel, including a bundled pricing program
for software features, he added.
Analysts remain skeptical about the strength of NetApp's channel
in the SMB space, however. "StoreVault hasn't exactly been hitting
the ball out of the park," said Janet Waxman, vice president and
channel analyst for IDC. NetApp is a big player in the enterprise
storage market, but it's overshadowed by bigger names in the
low-end market like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP).
StoreVault is run as a completely separate business unit, and the
StoreVault brand doesn't carry NetApp's name recognition.
"They're ramping, but slowly," according to Waxman, but she
added, "Coming out with an iSCSI-only version of StoreVault might
lay the seeds for broader efforts."
NetApp isn't the only storage vendor to take a new swing at the
SMB market. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) came out with a new line of
SMB systems earlier this month, and EMC Corp. CEO Joe Tucci said
last week that EMC will soon launch a new SMB system.