Irreverence

posted on 11 July 2008 03:06

Dell has a block storage line with four product ranges in it and a file storage line with one product range. Why doesn't it come to market with as substantial a NAS (network-attached storage) product line-up as its block storage line-up?

Dell prides itself on the Dell effect, providing simplified and powerful products in an established or rapidly establishing market. An example of an established market is printers. A rapidly establishing market is block storage. An established storage market is NAS, yet Dell has only a limited NAS product line.

Its block storage line consists of:-

1. Entry-level and SME - PowerVault MD3000
2. Dell (EMC) AX4
3. Mid-range SAN and iSCSI virtualization - Dell EqualLOgic PS5000 Series
4. Enterprise SAN - CX3 with both Fibre Channel and iSCSI interfaces and up to 480 disk drives.

Each of these four block storage line members consist of multiple products. There is only a single NF NAS product line. The products, based on Windows Storage Server, are:-

1. NF600 - tower or 5U rackmount unit for high capacity; to 10 X SAS or SATA 3.5-inch drives
2. NF500 - 2U rackmount unit for high density; to 6 x SAS or SATA 3.5-inch drives
3. NF100 - tower form factor and small/remote office NAS; to 4 x 3.5-inch SATA drives
4. NX1950 - iSCSI block storage and NAS gateway in 4 or 5U rackmount with up to 45 x SAS 3.5-inch drives

The NAS operating system software features a single instance filestore, a distributed file system and replication. The NX1950 also has snapshots and virtual disk copy.

Compared to the SAN block storage product line the NAS product line seems pretty limited.

The company has to walk before it can run in storage and it is easier to build share in a fast-moving and growing market than in a relatively mature market. NAS must surely be classified as a relatively mature market. Having said that a new front is opening up with hectic enterprise unstructured file growth.

This market overlaps with the rich media world where music and video files are undergoing a mass transition to digital formats. It also overlaps with Web 2.0 companies who are facing massive storage requirements to hold user-generated content.

In this area HP has announced its ExDS9100 extreme data storage system for massively scalable file storage.
Sun of course also has Thumper, its X4500 and X4540 storage-dense servers. EMC has its developing Hulk hardware (InfiniFlex 10000)/Maui software combo. Such systems are seen as being capable of massive growth by aggregating boxes (nodes) together. IBM has its acquired XIV technology.

As a speculation it could be thought logical for Dell to substantially upgrade its NAS product line and take advantage of the new NAS market that its competitors are entering. We might expect the company to establish an upgraded enterprise NAS product range, either through in-house engineering or through its classic partnership route.

PS. Dell has no virtual tape library (VTL) hardware product either.

PPS. Dell has gained the number 1 position in iSCSI according to IDC and is pretty confident about its abilities.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}