HP is making a handful of storage announcements as the Asia Pacific StorageWorks Conference opens its doors in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Don't let the esoteric location of the announcements sway you: The new products and features announced today will be available, shortly, not only in Asia but worldwide .
If you are sold on the c-Class BladeSystem from HP perhaps the most interesting piece of news today will be the availability of the Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch on that platform.
The MDS 9124e comes in a 12 and a 24 FC ports version. Both models push their ports up to 4G, are VSAN capable and should be available starting March 1st. Expect a price around $6,000 for the 12-port model, $9,500 for the larger unit.
ProLiant DL585 G2 Storage Server should immediately evoke the convergence of Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 and HP gear, an expected development after a similar recent announcement from Dell.
The DL585 G2 mount 64 bit dual-core AMD processors and connect to back-end storage via FC ports. Among other features, the new Microsoft OS offers iSCSI target and simultaneous file serving capability. Availability is February 12, for a price just shy of $19K.
Probably the less surprising, but certainly not the least important, part of the announcement relates to Data Protector, HP beloved backup application. Starting sometime in February, version 6 of Data Protector will offer the possibility of encrypting backup data directly at the client using AES 256.
On this most sensitive issue of software implemented tape encryption, HP follows closely the footprints of Symantec and IBM that recently added a similar capability to their flagship backup apps. Data Protector with 10 licenses should sell for about $3,000.
Posted by Mario Apicella on February 5, 2007 12:05 AM
