NetApp rolls out new midrange storage arrays

Network World - Network Appliance Inc. unveiled two midrange storage arrays yesterday for small and midsize businesses running transaction and data-intensive applications.

The FAS3040 and the V3040 are Fibre Channel, network-attached storage (NAS) and iSCSI storage arrays that scale to 252 drives and 126TB of capacity. They intermix Fibre Channel and Serial ATA drives in the same enclosure, enabling storage tiering and information life-cycle management. The V series is NetApp's virtualization appliance, which front-ends and pools storage-area network arrays.

Just as the FAS3070 and V3070 provided a refresh of the FAS3050 and V3050 in November 2006, the new FAS3040 and V3040 complete the refresh of the FAS3000 series storage systems by offering two times the performance and 50% more storage scalability than the lower-end FAS3020. They contain 64-bit controllers and support remote management. The arrays incorporate 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel and can support optional 10GbE connectivity.

"One of the big things for us is the FAS3040's 10Gbit Ethernet connectivity," said Craig Vershon, IT infrastructure manager for Newfield Exploration in Houston. "We are finding that we are hitting limitations on throughput on our current NetApp boxes." Vershon runs Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Oracle, as well as oil and gas exploration applications, on his NetApp boxes.

Both arrays compete with EMC Corp.'s CX3-40 and the Hewlett-Packard Co. Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) 8000. Unlike the EMC CX3-40 and HP EVA8000, the FAS3040 and V3040 support connection to the network as a NAS appliance. They also support RAID Double Parity (DP) (RAID 6).

The FAS3040 starts at $83,000 for 2TB capacity. The V3040 starts at $58,450.