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High-capacity FAS2020 raises bar for manageability, performance
NetApp today is announcing new heirs to the thrones of its entry-level storage arrays, the FAS250 and FAS270. These crown princes, the FAS2020 and the FAS2050, yield more capacity, better performance, and improved manageability -- at a similar or lower price.
Click for larger view. I got an early exclusive look at the FAS2020, which can mount as many as 12 SAS (serial attached SCSI) drives of any capacity in a 2U chassis. Using external modules, the array can expand to a total of 40 drives, including SATA. Those 40 drives bring its total capacity to 24TB, well above what was possible with the older models.
The FAS2020 offers concurrent FC (Fibre Channel) and iSCSI connectivity via single or dual controller. Each controller mounts two 4Gb FC and two Gigabit Ethernet ports, which, together with the unified storage capabilities of the ONTAP OS, makes the 2020 a target for concurrent access via file- and block-oriented protocols
As a point of comparison, the newly unveiled FAS2070 is a step above the 2020, delivering more than 100 drives when fully configured, plus 4GB of cache memory. And these machines, compared to their predecessors, offer not only higher capacity, but better performance with twice the number of FC and Ethernet ports. The new Remote Platform Management feature -- the first of its kind that I've seen to come bundled with storage servers -- is rich icing on the cake.
Hurray for array manageability
My test environment included an IBM E326 server, VMware ESX 3.0.1, plus a FAS2020 mounting 12 SAS drives, each with 144GB capacity...