iSCSI

Direct Connect SAS storage for HP Blades

Hello again folks, in the SMB world, especially during these economic times, we can’t always spend all the money we want on storage. Generally customers are limited to looking at some pretty low end storage options.

I have always been a proponent of usings Blades in the SMB along with virtualization to reduce costs for the SMB. But what do you do for storage? Well the most common thing people look at is iSCSI vs FC. Usually people end up going the iSCSI route due to it’s lower cost factor.

Well another thing you can look at is direct attached storage. HP offers something called Direct Connect SAS storage for their HP BladeSystem. This can give you up to 420 TB of zoned or up to 192 TB of shared storage. This can be an attractive alternative for the SMB.

The way it works is by use of controllers installed in the blade severs along with blade switch interconnects and then finally either an MSA2000sa for shared storage or an MDS600 for direct attached storage. You can read more about the solution from HP here.

-RP

HP buys LeftHand Networks and Colubris

Hi folks, there’s some more news from the storage world. HP bought LeftHand Networks to the tune of $360 million dollars. Now that’s a big chunk of change. They also went out and bought Colubris. Also don’t forget their acquisition of EDS earlier this year.

HP has definitely been on an acquisition binge and that leaves one wondering what the heck are they positioning themselves for. Well the purchase of EDS is well known. That just leaves the other two. I suspect HP wasn’t happy with their current wireless strategy and would like to focus it a bit more with the purchase of Colubris which specializes in wireless technologies. I’ve worked with Colubris devices and they have a myriad of options and features not available on similar wireless devices.

The purchase of LeftHand would be to shore up their lower end iSCSI storage offerings I suspect. I’ve worked with the current HP iSCSI offerings on a regular basis so it should be interesting to see how this development plays out with the current product line.

 -RP