The latest spin on storage from ENSA

FOR THE SECOND year in a row, industry analysts and their ilk were not among those present at ENSA@Work, or any other component of the Enterprise Storage Conference that recently took place from in Orlando, Florida, USA.

More than 2K customers and channel partners attended the conference, which consisted of three events: the HP Executive SAN Series for CxO-level storage decision-makers, HP ENSA@Work for resellers and distributors, and HP National Storage Days for customers.

While HP chose not to have analysts—who are neither resellers nor distributors, and whose purchases are of the iPAQ and Evo, not of the the Superdome and Marvel variety—in the crowd, the firm nevertheless made a slew of announcements about new and enhanced products.

HP announced across-the-board enhancements to the HP StorageWorks NAS solutions portfolio, furthering the company's fusion of NAS and SAN environments. This latest introduction of products and solutions continue to advance the ENSAextended strategy of delivering the storage framework for an Adaptive Infrastructure.

HP also introduced an Internet protocol (IP) storage solution that enables server and storage connectivity to Fibre Channel SANs across an Ethernet network.

The highlights of the announcement included the HP StorageWorks SR2122 iSCSI storage router, which provides a low cost approach for customers seeking to augment existing Fibre Channel SANs and to provide SAN connectivity to isolated servers through IP networks.

The entire HP StorageWorks NAS portfolio got a shot in the arm as well: the NAS b2000, b3000 and e7000 have leveraged the latest technology from the HP ProLiant family of servers, resulting in performance increases of up to 20 percent and price reductions of up to 42 percent relative to the previous generation of products.

The NAS 8000 now supports new multi-pathing software, the HP NAS Data Path Manager, and the HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA). On the increasingly-important services front, HP is offering new and enhanced storage services, including Critical Services for SANs, Data Migration Service, Enhanced SAN Solution Service, and Enhanced Backup and Recovery Solution Service.

Those with a hankering for hardware will be pleased to learn that both the StorageWorks XP Disk Array Family and EVA now support new 146GB 10K RPM drives. With 146GB drives, the XP systems now have the highest scalability in the industry with up to 150TB in a single system.

The EVA supports up to 34TB behind a single pair of controllers with the new drives. And as an added bonus, HP debuted the HP StorageWorks Library and Tape Tools.

A free download that deploys in less than five minutes, L&TT is a diagnostic tool for tape, tape automation and archival products. Product capabilities include firmware downloads, verification of device operation, maintenance procedures, and failure analysis. According to several resellers, the multifaceted storage show was a big hit.