Keeping SANs Simple

icrosoft wants to make SANs palatable for small business, and is recruiting vendors and their channel partners to help in that push.

The software giant is bringing vendors together in a program called Simple SAN to cut the cost and complexity of deploying entry-level SANs in businesses that still depend on direct-attached storage.

The first Simple SAN bundle was recently unveiled by Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., and QLogic, Costa Mesa, Calif.

The bundle is built around an HP StorageWorks MSA1000 Small Business SAN Kit—a new version of the company’s MSA1000 array—and includes an eight-port Fibre Channel switch and two Fibre Channel host bus adapters from QLogic.

The list price for the kit without hard drives is $9,999.

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The different components are tied together using the storage-specific features of Windows Server 2003, said Rahul Auradkar, director of the Windows Server Division at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft. “Our goal is to drive SAN proliferation in small and midsize businesses,” he said.

The company’s operating system was not modified for Simple SAN, Auradkar said. Rather, Microsoft is pushing its vendor partners to make sure all the drivers and applications work together. “We want them to focus on the whole solution customer experience,” he said.

Stephen Allen, president of Integrated Technology Systems, a New York-based small-business solution provider, lauded the move by the vendors.

“It’s good that HP recognizes that small businesses need more computing power than most people give them credit for,” Allen said. “It’s wrong to think a small business can be down for a day. It’s actually worse for a small business than a larger business. The company is the owner’s soul.”

However, it’s also wrong to let small businesses think a SAN can be acquired for less than $10,000, Allen said. “You can’t build a SAN without the disks,” he said. “Imagine selling a car without tires.”