News

Dell Releases NAS Device

• By Scott Bekker
• March 22, 2004

Dell calls the NAS server the PowerVault 745N and designed it for corporate workgroups, branch offices and small businesses. As those types of usage environments are frequently short on IT staff, Dell officials emphasize the ease of use of its new server. "Deployment has been simplified to take as little as 15 minutes," Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage, said in a statement.

Disk capacity ranges from 160 GB to 4 TB of external SCSI disk, and the NAS device fits in 1U of rack space. It is available with an Intel Celeron or Pentium 4 processor with speeds up to 3.2 GHz. In addition to the storage capabilities in Windows Storage Server, such as Volume Shadow Copy Service and Virtual Disk Services, Dell is pitching support for Dell PowerVault tape back-up devices and data protection software from Veritas and Yosemite Technologies.

The PowerVault 745N starts at $1,800. More information is available at www.dell.com/storage.

The 745N is one of four Dell PowerVault NAS devices, and the thinnest of the three that support Windows Storage Server 2003. An older 1U model, the 725N comes only with a Windows Powered OS that is based on Windows 2000 Advanced Server and scales to 1 TB of disk, a quarter of the 745N's capacity. The two larger models boast much more storage capacity. The 5U 770N supports up to 17.2 TB of SCSI disk, and the 2U 775N supports up to 16.7 TB of SCSI disk.