Storage There was no shortage of innovation or value from storage vendors this year.(Product/Service Evaluation)

By InfoWorld Test Center staff

More vendors caught the iSCSI and SATA waves this year, and the result was a flood of more capable storage solutions at lower prices. This year's high-water mark in delivering enterprise-oriented features at small business pricing was the Dell/EMC AX100, which, in the configuration we tested, combines 3TB of SATA storage, FC (Fibre Channel) connectivity, and EMC's excellent management software at a price that comes in south of $20,000.

However, EMC wasn't the only enterprise storage vendor to turn its attention down-market, with Network Appliance wowing us with the very flexible, modularly scalable FAS270C NAS-SAN hybrid priced at less than $30,000.

The tide didn't ebb on innovation, either, especially in storage networking. Array and switch vendors alike offered creative solutions to ease the transition from direct-attached storage to IP SANs (StoneFly), to bridge IP and Fibre Channel (Brocade), and to build easier-to-manage (nStor) and more scalable (Qlogic) FC SANs.

Finally, we also saw a variety of approaches to soothing backup headaches, from vendors as diverse as Maxxan, Network Appliance, Overland Storage, and Spectra Logic, all of which turned out backup solutions that earned high marks.

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Backup solutions

Fujitsu Softek Replicator 2.1

Softek

Excellent, 8.9

Cost: Starts at $2,300

Bottom Line: The Replicator 2.1 solution provides simple, effective data replication across TCP/IP networks. It's compatible with almost all OSes, file systems, and storage devices.

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LiveVault Online Backup and Recovery Service

LiveVault

Very …