HP Adds All-in-One Big Brother

HP  this week added a new box to its All-in-One Storage family, which the computer systems maker launched last fall to make storage easy for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) with little or no IT staffs.

The HP StorageWorks 1200 All-in-One Storage System (HP AiO1200) helps customers manage, store and protect data from files or applications such as Microsoft’s Exchange or SQL Server. The array follows the first two machines from the AiO family, the AiO400 and AiO600, which combined iSCSI , SAN and NAS to also manage Exchange and other applications.

The AiO1200 does all that but is designed for the higher end of the SMB market; it is a 2U (1U = 1.75 inches) rack-mount machine with 12 drives that stores as much as 9 terabytes of data. This is a significant boost from the AiO400, which comes with four SATA drives and stores up to 1TB, or the AiO600, which offers customers the option of using six SAS or SATA drives and storing 876 gigabytes of SAS or 1.5TB or 3TB of SATA.

The brother of them all. Source: HP

Unlike its AiO400 and Ai600 brothers, the AiO1200 offers mixed drive support to allow customers to run both serial ATA (SATA) and serial-attached SCSI (SAS) in the same enclosure, said Harry Baeverstad, newly named director of HP’s StorageWorks SMB Business.

SATA offers higher density and lower performance for storing data but is less costly than SAS, which has lower density but superior performance.

“The AiO will discover SAS and SATA, and as you configure and set up your storage for Exchange and SQL or file shares, you can go in and choose whether you want to use SAS and SATA,” Baeverstad said. “What you’re getting is tiered storage and the ability to manage that tiered storage.” For example, users may choose to use the higher performing SAS technology to save Exchange data, and lower cost SATA for MP3 file storage.

The AiO1200 also supports StorageWorks Storage Mirroring technology, which allows users to replicate data across multiple sites between AiO boxes for disaster-recovery coverage.

The AiO family management software, All-in-One Storage Manager, now includes set up and migration wizard support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 so customers can move from direct-attached to network storage in fewer than 10 mouse clicks. Previously, the management software supported Microsoft Exchange 2003.

HP is selling the AiO1200 now through its 145,000+ channel resellers. Entry configuration is 3TB of SATA storage for $8,759 and 9TB for $15,899. Entry configuration for SAS is 1.7TB for $13,899, up to 3.6TB for $19,529.

Baeverstad said almost half of HP’s storage product sales are going to SMB, thanks in part to AiO, which HP executives introduced at an event in New York last September. HP believes AiO and its other SMB storage products will help it compete against traditional storage system providers in the market.

“When you look at our competitors like EMC , NetApp, Dell and others, we think they’re going to struggle to compete with HP’s product in breadth and depth from the desktop to the datacenter,” Baeverstad said.