Dell Releases SMB SAN

January 10, 2008: Dell has rolled out a new storage area network (SAN) device for small to medium businesses, promising to meet the growing storage needs simply and cost effectively.

Because it has been designed specifically for SMBs, Dell is touting the AX4-5 as an entry level appliance that offers ease of use and new capacity provisioning in as little as one minute.

IDC claims demand for storage capacity is continuing to grow at 60 percent a year, and while many SMBs face the same problems as larger entities when it comes to data growth and management their budgets have remained flat.To this end, Dell claims its AX4-5 array addresses growth thank to its ability to expand up to 60 drives, supporting up to 60TB of data. It can be configured for Fibre Channel or iSCSI networks, and supports mixed drive configurations such as SAS drives for high performance and SATA drives for capacity.

“This is the latest step in the strong partnership between Dell and EMC,” said Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager, Dell storage. “We’ve worked closely with EMC to define, design and deliver this system tailored to SMBs. Together we are delivering capabilities not previously seen in entry-level SANs.”

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