Hewlett-Packard brushed up its Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) product line with a new model, the EVA 4400, which fits between the recently launched MSA2000 and the rest of the EVA series.
The EVA 4400 product will eventually replace the EVA 4100 disk array that HP rolled out last June. Pricing starts at US$15,000, which is 20% less than the starting price of the EVA 4100, according to HP SAN director of marketing Kyle Fitze. Unlike the MSA products, the EVA 4400 includes only dual controllers and support for local and remote replication software. It also has features, such as setup wizards, meant to boost its ease of use.
Other new features in the 4400 include end-to-end 4 Gbit Fibre Channel (FC) and support for 1 TB SATA drives, which boosts the maximum capacity to 96 TB.
HP isn't breaking any ground with the system. Competitors have already offered end-to-end 4 Gbit FC and support for 1 TB disks, and HP has offered setup wisards for other products. However, analysts said that the significance of the announcement is in the way HP is reframing the EVA to try to broaden its appeal "“ perhaps to customers who aren't primarily HP shops.
"We spend a huge amount of time talking about startups with neat technology," said Mark Peters, an Enterprise Strategy Group analyst. "It would be nice to see HP sellling standalone storage outside the HP base."
The new EVA will support QLogic's 8 Gbit FC host bus adapters (HBAs) and switches through a simple SAN connection kit, similar to a 4 Gbit version HP announced last year. The new EVA will also support Dynamic Capacity Manager, a feature announced last year with the 4100 model that supports a flexible provisioning mechanism in Windows Server 2008. Both the QLogic and Microsoft products are slated to be available in the first half of this year.
It's a good sign that HP is "future-proofing" its boxes, according to IDC analyst Natalya Yeshkova. "This is a fairly routine upgrade to their systems, but they can say they have a few things competitors don't have yet, and their system is ready for upcoming technology refreshes," she said.
"The user must configure the disk group and create initial LUNs [with DCM]," an HP spokesperson wrote in an email to TechTarget. "Traditional thin provisioning also requires the user to create virtual LUNs and thin-provisioning pools." HP also said it is considering adding support for more typical thin provisioning.