NetApp plans new low-end filer
FAS2000 may replace older FAS270
By Deni Connor, Network World | Network World US | Published: 01:54, 18 July 2007
Network Appliance is set to announce a new low-end network-attached storage appliance before the end of the month.
While the new FAS2000 series is designed for small and mid-size businesses, it also has enterprise technologies such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI, as well as Serial Attached SCSI disk drives. Further, it uses the Data OnTAP operating system and supports Fibre Channel and Serial ATA disk drives, and is upgradeable to FAS3000 and FAS6000 file servers.
The FAS2000 series has two models - the FAS2050 and the FAS2020. The FAS2050 has a capacity of 69TB and supports 104 non-removable disks. The FAS2020 has a capacity of 24TB and supports 40 non-removable disks. The FAS2050 has four Fibre Channel and four Gigabit Ethernet connections; the smaller FAS2020 has two of each. Each model supports 1GB of memory.
The FAS2000 series is expected to replace the FAS270, which was introduced in 2002, and has a capacity of 16TB and 56 drives.
Like other NetApp filers, the FAS2000 series supports Microsoft's Common Internet File System, the Unix/Linux Network File System, the Fibre Channel Protocol, iSCSI, HTTP, FTP and TFTP. It also supports the Network Data Management Protocol, which controls the backup of heterogeneous devices.
Although Network Appliance declined to comment on the new appliances, sources indicate that the systems will ship to customers in September.
