Category: Storage
EqualLogic PS300E
Price: $56,000
If there's one vendor that EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems are closely watching, it's Nashua, N.H.-based EqualLogic. The company has taken the iSCSI SAN market by storm, and its channel-only approach to bringing its wares to market means there should be little for solution providers to complain about when it comes to conflicts with the vendor's direct-sales force. The PS300E is a 7-TB SAN that EqualLogic says can be set up in just 20 minutes. It runs with SATA-based 500-GB drives and is managed by intelligent, automated load-balancing software based on dual-core RISC processors. The SAN has battery-backed mirrored RAID cache, is capable of performing volume replication and can scale to more than 100 TB, according to the company. At $56,000, the cost of storing data on the PS300E comes out to $8,000 per terabyte.
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Midmarket Product Categories
NetApp StoreVault S500
Price: Starts at $5,000
No, this is not a typo. NetApp has joined the midmarket fray with the recent formation of its StoreVault unit. The company is selling these products only through the channel and is straying from its traditional enterprise base to recruit midmarket-centric solution providers. The StoreVault S500 is an all-in-one device that can be used to create a SAN or can function as network-attached storage. The initial release is iSCSI-compatible and is certified under Microsoft's SimpleSAN program.
EMC Insignia Solution For Data Protection
Price: Starts at $12,000
Everyone needs data protection, and EMC is looking to tap into a broad customer set with this turnkey solution. The Insignia consists of EMC's Retrospect backup-and-recovery software, which is bundled with the company's new Clariion AX150 and AX150i networked storage systems. A special version designed specifically for Microsoft Exchange is also available. This end-to-end solution is offered only through EMC's Velocity SMB partners.
IBM SAN Volume Controller 4.1
Price: Starts at $42,500
While some people associate virtualization with large enterprises, many of IBM's biggest success stories with its SVC software come from midsize organizations. With a couple of thousand installations in place, the software, which comes bundled with IBM's System x, is implemented predominantly by the channel. To provide simplified resource management, the SVC controls multiple vendors' storage controllers, and the newest release has Global Mirror, designed to reduce delays in data transfer over long distances.
Symantec Backup Exec 10d For Windows
Price: $795
Backup Exec is the leading product when it comes to the crowded market for backup and recovery for Windows solutions. The newest release boasts support for continuous data protection, or CDP, which effectively allows customers to back up data in near real-time, vastly reducing the amount of time it takes to perform backups. It also offers Web-based file retrieval, enabling individuals to recover lost files on their own rather than requiring them to go to a systems administrator for assistance.