HDS Readies SAN Bundles For Server Consolidation, Microsoft Exchange

The SAN bundle, based on the company's Thunder 9570V storage array, includes four Emulex Fibre Channel host-bus adapters, two 16-port Brocade Silkworm 3800 Fibre Channel switches, Brocade's Web-based SAN management and SAN zoning tools, and HDS' device management and LUN security tools.

HDS currently sells about 50 percent of its arrays through indirect channels, said Mel Tungate, director of global product and services marketing at the vendor, based here. He said he expects to sell most of the new bundled SANs via the channel.

The bundle offers a turnkey solution that has been pretested and preconfigured for the channel, said Marc Trimuschat, director of OEM marketing at Brocade. Besides its use in Exchange environments, the preconfigured SAN can also be used to help customers migrate Windows NT 4 and Exchange version 5.5 to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000, Trimuschat said.

"A reseller with a SAN and Exchange migration practice typically will have customers with multiple servers with direct-attached storage," he said. "Five, 10 or 15 servers can be consolidated onto a smaller number of servers at the same time the customer migrates to the new operating system."

The bundles are expected to be available late in this quarter, according to HDS. The price has yet to be determined, but it will be less than if the included components were purchased separately, Tungate said.