Mohan-- another good article on the dell-ntap storage servers that I do not believe has been posted here. PS bought a little more NTAP today <G>
courtesy of the DellAlternative Board
I especially like this part:
>> According to Barnes, sites where the solution has been installed have seen dramatic improvements in file access performance. Barnes also noted that the implementation of a NAS has allowed Parsons to
optimize its application servers for running their specific applications.<<
and >>"If you have a more heterogenous world, like most Fortune 1000 companies, a NAS may actually be a better solution [than a SAN]," said Carl Howe, research director at Forrester Research, in Cambridge,
Mass.<<
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Posted at 7:11 AM PT, May 3, 1999
As corporate data begins to accumulate across every facet of company IT infrastructures, all of the major PC vendors are filing into the storage arena, with Dell staking out a wide swath of territory early.
Dell, which in February announced its storage area network (SAN) solution, this week is enhancing its storage offerings with a series of network-attached storage (NAS) solutions, called PowerVault filers.
Unlike SANs, which are designed to provide robust, fault-tolerant storage for mission-critical data, Dell's NAS is designed to off-load file access functions from front-end servers by storing and serving
files directly to clients.
"A NAS does one thing and one thing well, and that is feed data to clients," said Kevin Reinis, general manager of storage systems at Dell. "That allows you to off-load servers from data so they can run
applications more efficiently."
Parsons, an engineering and construction company in Pasadena, Calif., has been using a similar solution from Dell partner Network Appliance to handle its storage needs.
"I was given the task of trying to do a server consolidation, and we have these large sites that have pretty large user populations on site and maybe 30 servers," said Randy Barnes, manager of distributed
computing at Parsons. "So I figured, why don't we try to collapse that into a storage device and application servers where data will live on the [NAS] and applications will live on the application servers."
According to Barnes, sites where the solution has been installed have seen dramatic improvements in file access performance. Barnes also noted that the implementation of a NAS has allowed Parsons to
optimize its application servers for running their specific applications.
The advantages of a NAS over a SAN also include the capability to remain OS-agnostic due to the fact that it runs its own embedded file system, enabling the storage and retrieval of data from a variety of
client-side operating systems, Reinis noted.
"If you have a more heterogenous world, like most Fortune 1000 companies, a NAS may actually be a better solution [than a SAN]," said Carl Howe, research director at Forrester Research, in Cambridge,
Mass.
Dell's PowerVault filers, which are based heavily on technology from Network Appliance, will be available in June, with prices starting at $26,500. Later this year Dell expects to complete its storage solution by connecting the file servers from its NAS to the switch on its SAN. This, according to Reinis, will allow users to realize the efficiency advantages of a NAS and the fault-tolerance advantages of a SAN in one cohesive solution.
Hewlett-Packard and IBM are also expected to bolster their storage solutions this week.
HP will introduce enterprise storage solutions and services focused around their recent e-services initiative. IBM will also enhance its SAN offerings this week, adding the capability to integrate existing Serial Systems Architecture-based disk storage systems into its SAN in an effort to offer greater scalability.
Compaq, meanwhile, is set to introduce its own NAS solution in the coming months, according to sources.
Dell Computer Corp., in Round Rock, Texas, can be reached at www.dell.com.
Michael Lattig is an InfoWorld reporter. |
