ISCSI was in the news last week with EqualLogic being acquired by Dell, LeftHand Networks introducing new iSCSI storage appliances and Dynamic Network Factory teaming with Bell Microproducts to bring iSCSI to Apple’s Xserve RAID arrays.

Anyone would have had to spend the week in an isolation tank to not hear about the $1.4 billion in cash Dell plunked down to acquire Equallogic and its iSCSI assets. Dell will add iSCSI functionality to its PowerVault arrays and continue to market EqualLogic storage through the channel. 

The company says that the EqualLogic buy complements its storage strategy of IT simplification – making storage as easy to manage and install as servers.

And, indeed it does. Talk with some of EqualLogic’s customers and they will tell you that there is nothing easier to work with than iSCSI.

LeftHand, perhaps unwittingly, chose last week to unveil two new iSCSI appliances – the NSM (Network Storage Module) 4150 and the NSM 2060. These new appliances join the LeftHand NSM 160, a smaller capacity array. The NSM 4150 is a 4U appliance that holds as many as 15 3.5-inch hard disks. Those hard disks can be 300GB Serial Attached SCSI, 500GB Serial ATA or 750GB Serial ATA. The NSM 2060 is a 2U appliance that can hold six 3.5-inch drives.

The NSM 4150 starts at $32,000; the NSM 2060 starts at $15,000.

Finally, Dynamic Network Factory (DNF) and Bell Microproducts teamed to deliver iSCSI capability to Apple Xserve arrays. DNF makes the StorMacX appliance, which connects to the network either as network-attached storage or iSCSI. Together, the two companies will distribute the appliance to Apple Xserve users.

Editor's note: Starting the week of Nov. 19, you will notice a number of enhancements to Network World newsletters that will provide you with more resources and more news links relevant to the newsletter's subject. Beginning Tuesday, Nov. 13, the Storage in the Enterprise Newsletter, written by Network World Senior Editor Deni Connor, will be merged with the Storage News Alert and will be named the Storage Alert. You'll get Deni's analysis of the storage market, which you will be able to read in full at NetworkWorld.com, plus links to the day's storage news and other relevant resources. This Alert will be mailed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We hope you will enjoy the enhancements and we thank you for reading Network World newsletters.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.