Perhaps a signs of changing times was today's unveiling, in London, of Lenovo's LenovoEMC VNX5150 storage array, an entry-level SAN (storage area network) solution aimed at SMB enterprise businesses and with a suggested retail price of 8,500 Euros (about £ 6,650, AU$ 12,290, $ 10,900) excluding VAT.
The Storage Array is powered by a pair of Intel Xeon 5600 processors backed by 16GB of RAM and is based on EMC's own VNX family.
Unsurprisingly, it comes with a whole array of EMC features like its FAST Cache and FAST VP as well as its embedded management system, Unisphere.
Compatible with SAS-flavours of 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard disk drives (with support for RAID-0/1/10/3/5/6), it is, according to Lenovo, geared towards mixed workloads both physical and virtual.
Physically, it is a 3U unit that supports up to 125 hard disk drives (via the addition of extra drive enclosures or DAEs) and a maximum raw capacity of 480TB. The 3U unit can house 15 drives while the extra DAEs can take on 25 2.5-inch drives.
The whole thing is powered by a 1.2KW PSU with two GbE management NICs, up to 24 ports per array (up to 16 FC and 8 iSCSI ports).
