Hewlett-Packard is revamping the bottom end of its StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family with a new system the company says will better address that cherished lower-upper-midsized business market.

Or was that upper-lower-midsized...?

Anyway, it's for enterprise customers that are too big for HPs entry-level storage area network (SAN) MSA boxes, but don't need the 240-drive gorilla at the top end of the EVA lineup.

HP's director of StorageWorks marketing Kyle Fitze said the EVA 4400 will eventually replace its current EVA 4100 systems.

Each 4400 enclosure has 12 slots supporting 1TB FATA drives connected with 4Gb/s Fibre, with expansions boosting the maximum capacity up to 96TB. HP says the maximum IOPS are 140,000/sec.

Like the bigger EVAs, the box uses dual controllers and supports local and remote replication. New to the product line is SmartStart software. Fitze said SmartStart helps EVA 4400 set-up by configuring host bus adapters (HBAs) and switches. That software may later expand to the bigger EVA boxes, according to Fitze.

The system's price begins at $15,000, with a starter option of either eight 400GB 10K rpm disks, or eight 146GB 15k rpm disks.

The EVA 4400 stat sheet is available here. ®

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