Compellent Adds to Storage Line

Data here; data there; data, data everywhere, many small and medium businesses find themselves in that predicament. In response, Compellent enhanced its Network Attached Storage (NAS) line, so it now supports file level and block level storage.With the Internet offering individuals so many communications options, companies are seeing a significant rise in unstructured data, such as office documents, digital images and video. Compellent announced the zNAS, which is designed to ease storage administration by supporting virtual storage pools.

The product offers a single interface for managing mixed Unix, Linux and Windows (CIFS/NFS) files and block data. The storage system features a 128-bit file system that addresses 18 quintillion(1.841,019) times more data than current 64-bit systems. The system includes block-level intelligence, enables companies to manage data inside the volume, and tracks frequency of access. Pricing for adding two clustered zNAS nodes to an existing Compellent SAN starts at $36,000 and for a new system with 8.7 T bytes of begins at $84,000.

Compellent has carved out a growing niche in the storage market by delivering low cost, high performance products. The companys zNAS is designed to marry NAS and SAN features, which could help small and medium businesses consolidate their storage systems. In the short term, businesses could find such products appealing. However, longer term, vendors are moving to collapse server, network, and storage functions into single systems. How that change will impact niche vendors, such as Compellent, is unclear, and there is risk that the company could be acquired as the market matures.