Hewlett Packard Clarifies Storage Plans.

Acknowledging that storage is a priority for the company, Hewlett Packard consolidated its storage operations into a single storage organization. The organization's area of coverage includes four basic product areas: data protection, data management, integrated solutions, and new business development, according to materials provided by HP.

The overlap of storage devices across "solution" sets (for example, hard drives can be found in NAS and SAN systems, in addition to JBODs and tape drives, and CD-Recorders may turn up nearly anywhere) may have made it necessary to consolidate management of the diverse storage-related organizations under a single umbrella. The mixing of SAN and NAS, plus the frequent blurring of distinction between them, may have helped prompt the consolidation of efforts into a single storage division.

Last year, HP released its first NAS device a desktop (or under desk) sys tem that could be easily attached to the network and provided from 9GB to 36GB of storage, plus the option for adding a DDS4 tape drive. An external SCSI connector also enabled the attachment of additional SCSI devices.

When compared to the somewhat puny (by comparison) NAS devices that were offered as easily attached storage additions for small networks, the HP NAS box was impressive in its expandability. Unlike the low-priced (starting at around $500) offerings from other companies, featuring IDE drives (and, thus, a limit of four drives, if adding drives was even possible), the HP NetStorage device used a SCSI bus and enabled hot swappability and easy field upgrades. In fairness, the two classes of NAS device with vastly different price points of $500-$3,000 in the IDE based systems and $6,000 plus for the HP system were designed for different uses and different budgets.

The HP SureStore NetStorage 6000 takes HP's push into the Enterprise NAS even further up the food chain. The NetStorage 6000 "targeted at medium- to large-sized departments and workgroups with mixed network environments," according to a company release, provides storage capacities ranging from 72GB up to 360GB with prices ranging from $25,500 up to $52,000, according to the company. The 6000 will be available in desktop and rack-mount configurations. The 6000 is intended for such mixed environments as those running NT, Unix, and Windows systems.

The 6000 is installed by connection to the network and comes with support for 10/100 base T built in. A dual 10/100 base T and a Gigabit Ethernet interface are available as options. RAID 5 is integrated into the system and all drives are hot swappable. Further, the NetStorage 6000 includes a hot-spare drive that can become active should one of the hot swappable drives fail.

Installation and configuration of the 6000 are said to be easy, taking only a few minutes, according to the company. Interaction with the device can be accomplished through front panel switches (used to initially configure the 6000) and through an embedded IP interface. The interface can be accessed over the network or over the Internet and can be viewed or modified using a standard browser. The company claims that management capabilities have been tightly integrated into such products as HP OpenView and Computer Associates' Unicenter TNG. The SureStore NetStorage 6000 will be available on May 1.

HP also announced a second NAS device, the AutoBackup. The AutoBackup connects to the network and is designed to automatically back up changes made on systems connected to the network.

The AutoBackup isn't designed to run as a backup system in the same way that a backup tape drive or tape library is designed. Such systems can typically back up entire networks or selected drives onto tape. On such systems, incremental backups record files changed since the last backup.

The AutoBackup is similar to an incremental backup device, automatically saving changes to files that were made since the user last logged on to the network or since the last changes were saved. AutoBackup isn't designed for complete backups. In some ways, what the AutoBackup is designed to do is similar to what some of the new ventures that perform backups over the Internet do: store change files whenever the user connects the computer. One of the big differences is that the connection is made to the AutoBackup rather than to a third party service and that the backup data remains under the control of the company using AutoBackup.

In addition to detecting when a user connects a notebook or desktop computer to the network, the AutoBackup applies intelligence to determining which files are changed, in addition to determining duplicate files. For example, if a company upgrades a version of Word onto all its user systems, the changed WORD.EXE file would look like a changed file to AutoBackup. Conceivably, AutoBackup would save the new file each time a user logged in. However, intelligence in AutoBackup detects the file duplications and only saves the changes the first time the file is detected. By excluding duplicate files, the amount of data backed up can remain relatively small.

This is a good thing, because the only storage device on the AutoBackup appears to be a CD-Recorder (the basic discs store a maximum of 640MB of data). The AutoBackup may be able to make use of hard drives on the network because it's a network-attached device. Additionally, a SCSI port on the back of the device can be connected to an external tape drive. The exact specifics of how AutoBackup stores amounts of data in excess of the capacity of a CD-R disc were not available from HP at press time.

Two versions of the AutoBackup will be offered with anticipated ship dates beginning in May. The AutoBackup PC25, designed for 25 users, will be priced at $4,950, while the AutoBackup PC100, designed to support as many as 100 users, will sell for $9,950.

In addition to the two NAS products, HP also announced that it will be offering 8-port Brocade fibre switches. The switches, available in May, can be used with new magneto-optic jukeboxes that HP also introduced. The jukeboxes, using 6.2GB media, will run under Windows NT or HPUX and will use a HP Fibre to SCSI bridge. Through the use of Fibre as an interconnect, data can be recorded up to 500 meters from the host, according to the company. (Fibre typically supports considerably longer distances, so this may be an understatement of actual distances supported). Fibre typically provides high security, since it emits no electromagnetic radiation that can be intercepted by people attempting to capture sensitive data. The company claims that, using fibre, MO jukeboxes can be mirrored in physically separated locations.

HP's 8 port switch also enables connection of other storage devices to the same switch. The switch uses GBICs and supports both optical fibre and copper. Further, the switch supports arbitrated loop and tape library connections and allows cascading.