* Dell releases iSCSI sorage array for small businesses
Dell forged further into the SMB storage space last week with the announcement of an iSCSI storage array.
The company, which competes with IBM and HP for the SMB market, introduced the Dell PowerVault MD3000i SAN array, a storage array that starts at a price most SMBs can afford – $7,000.
Dell’s newest array uses the iSCSI networking protocol, which makes it possible to transport block-level storage-area networking data over the Gigabit Ethernet network. Because many SMBs don’t have dedicated IT staff, use of iSCSI, which runs on top of Gigabit Ethernet, makes installing, configuring and managing the array easy and familiar for those organizations.
The MD3000i features as much as 18TB of storage capacity and has redundant active/active controllers, power supplies and fans. The array uses serial-attached SCSI (SAS) disks and includes snapshot and volume copy software, features common in storage arrays aimed at larger businesses.
Additionally the Dell PowerVault MD3000i can connect to as many as 16 host computers. Its capacity can be expanded by adding PowerVault MD1000 expansion enclosures, for a total capacity of 45 10,000 or 15,000 RPM SAS disk drives.
The MD3000i comes in two models – a standard edition and a high availability edition. The standard edition has a single controller and two 1Gbit Ethernet ports for attachment to the network. The high availability edition has dual controllers and two 1Gbit Ethernet ports per controller.
The software that ships with the MD3000i includes setup wizards that simplify installation and configuration. The Modular Disk Storage Manager software also ships with the MD3000i, along with a Java-based user interface. Multipathing software provides for establishing redundant data paths between host computers and storage. Optional software includes Virtual Disk Snapshots, which supports as many as four snapshots per virtual disk and 128 snapshots per system, and Virtual Disk Copy, which supports as many as eight simultaneous virtual disk copies.
The MD3000i competes with Dell’s own Dell/EMC AX150i, which scales to 9TB and also supports Fibre Channel as well as iSCSI. The AX150i also has replication capability for disaster recovery.
