New Offerings Build SANs Using IP Networks

The first, StoneFly Networks, hopes to bring SANs to smaller businesses with its StoneFly ValueSAN. The second, JMR Electronics, is positioning its Z-IPSAN storage appliance for enterprise workgroups or departments.

With its ValueSAN, StoneFly is looking to deliver a SAN at a price of less than $10,000, said Bob Peyser, vice president of marketing at the San Diego-based company.

ValueSAN includes StoneFly&s Storage Concentrator i3000 appliance, which combines a Dell server with StoneFly software that allows IP-based block-level provisioning of storage, as well as centralized management and monitoring of logical storage volumes. The i3000 scales to 19.2 Tbytes of SATA capacity in a single node and includes software for local and campus synchronous mirroring as well as for data snapshots.

The StoneFly ValueSAN starts at about $9,000, including the i3000, six 160-Gbyte hard drives and software to do synchronous mirroring, continuous data protection and data snapshots.

About two-thirds of StoneFly&s sales go through the channel. However, with the new lower-cost bundles, Peyser said he expects up to 80 percent of sales to come through the channel.

Henry Cornelius, vice president of sales at Emergent Systems Exchange, a VAR in Minneapolis, said customers are often concerned about the performance of IP-based SANs, but StoneFly has done a good job addressing those concerns. “Most of the concerns is FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] from big vendors like IBM, Network Appliance and EMC about performance,” he said. “But after customers try it, they&re happy. People that never thought they would deal with iSCSI or SATA get happy when they try it.”

As an example, Cornelius said he is replacing four racks of NetApp systems, for which a client is paying more than $80,000 per year in maintenance costs, with a half-rack of StoneFly equipment that will cost less than half that amount over three years.

The Z-IPSAN appliance from JMR, Chatsworth, Calif., offers a similar value proposition for enterprise workgroups. The device contains space for up to 16 hot-swappable SATA hard drives and 8 Tbytes of capacity per 3U enclosure. Multiple units can be connected for increased capacity.

The appliances have dual Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, and customers also have the option of adding Fibre Channel connectivity.

Z-IPSAN&s software includes clustering and virtualization capabilities between multiple units, automated data snapshots, data replication for disaster recovery and so-called thin provisioning. The latter feature allows a data administrator to provision more storage for an application than is actually available, allowing additional capacity to be seamlessly added as needed.

The Z-IPSAN appliance starts at $14,000.

JMR&s products are only available through the channel, the company said.