IBM Makes a NAS Play

by Alex Woodie

IBM signaled it's ready to grab its share of the network attached storage (NAS) market last week with the formation of an OEM partnership with Network Appliance, a key competitor to one of IBM's biggest rivals, EMC. Big Blue also unveiled the eServer Storage Server, its new line of Windows-based NAS devices with Intel-based xSeries servers running Microsoft's Windows Storage Server 2003.

The OEM deal announced last week will see IBM selling several re-branded NetApp products, including the NearStore boxes, which use inexpensive Serial ATA disks and often replaces tape libraries, and the NetApp V-Series Systems, which are flexible and scalable appliances that can bring together the disparate worlds of file-based NAS storage, Fibre Channel, and iSCSI. The deal also includes NetApp software, including the company's Data ONTAP operating system, which unifies block (Fibre Channel or iSCSI) and file (NAS) storage networking technologies.

The deal also calls for building deeper integration between NetApp's software and IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager, a backup and recovery product that works across major platforms, as well as a commitment by NetApp to point customers toward IBM tape drives. The two companies also say they are "exploring additional strategic opportunities."

The new OEM partnership with IBM will widen an already solid distribution channel for Network Appliance, a $1.2-billion developer of NAS and storage area network (SAN) hardware, software, and services. According to IDC, NetApp was the revenue share leader in both NAS and iSCSI for calendar year 2004, and that will undoubtedly grow in 2005, now that IBM is NetApp's biggest distributor around the world.

Representatives at EMC are likely fretting a bit about the new partnership between IBM and NetApp. Andy Monshaw, the general manager of IBM storage systems, singled out EMC--which has long been a key rival of IBM's in the high-end storage area--in describing the new NetApp partnership. "The choice for customers in the management and storage of information could not be more clear--open solutions from IBM and NetApp that provide systems level innovation versus proprietary point solutions from EMC."

But EMC is still on pretty solid footing, in high-end disk and backup software, among other places. In the worldwide storage software market, according to IDC, EMC owned about 28 percent of an $8 billion market in 2004, largely due to its $1.3 billion acquisition of storage software maker Legato in 2003. IBM is deep in the pack behind EMC/Legato, Veritas, and Computer Associates, with about 8 percent of the market for storage management software in 2004, according to IDC.

In other IBM storage news, the company last week unveiled its new eServer Storage Server, a line of five storage servers built on IBM's xSeries server line. IBM's new storage devices are based on Pentium 4 or Xeon processors with Intel's extended 64-bit memory technology, and feature a pre-loaded copy of Windows Storage Server 2003, which enables sharing of files across Windows, Linux, Unix, and Netware operating systems, in addition to other capabilities, such as Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS), Shadow Copy of Shared Folders, and disk quota management through Windows Storage Manager 2.0.

IBM unveiled several eServer Storage Server models, including two entry-level versions that are ideal for small and medium sized businesses on a tight budget, the xSeries 206 and 226 towers. The xSeries 206 is based on a one-way Pentium 4 processor and starts at $2,799 for 640GB of SATA storage, 512MB of memory, and a preconfigured ServeRAID 7t hardware adapter (which has the advantage of not taking up an I/O slot), while the x206, which features two-way Xeons, costs $3,655 and features 1TB of SCSI storage, 1GB of memory, and the ServeRAID 7t daughter card.

Companies requiring more scalability may consider the xSeries 346, a 2U device that scales up to 1.2TB of RAID5 protected storage, and can be upgraded with an additional processor and more storage. The xSeries 346 is available in two models. There's the "1.2TB" model, which features four 10,000 RPM SCSI disk drives, one 3.0GHz Xeon processor, 1GB of main memory, and the ServeRAID 7t daughter card. It starts at $9,269. The "Flexible SCSI" model provides four open disk bays that are available for user selectable SCSI data drives, uses 3.4GHz Xeon processors, features 1GB of memory, and the RAID card. It costs $5,144.

Larger data centers building their blade infrastructure may consider the new BladeCenter HS20, a slim NAS device that's intended to serve as a high-speed gateway to an existing SAN array. For $4,599, the HS20 features one 3.2Ghz Xeon processor (it can hold up to two), 1GB of DDR2 memory, two 36GB 10,000 RPM SCSI drives (to power the Windows operating system--remember, this is a NAS gateway and isn't designed to store customer data), and a two-port 2Gbps (Dual Gigabit) Fibre Channel expansion card.