Vendor unveils iSCSI storage for SMBs

Startup StorMagic Tuesday announced software designed to make it easy for small- and mid-sized businesses to deploy iSCSI storage-area networks.

The company's SM Series software installs on an industry-standard server or white-box storage system, converting it into an iSCSI storage array. The target customer for the SM Series is a business with five to 20 servers that uses direct-attached storage.

The SM Series works with Windows, NetWare, Macintosh and Linux servers.

The SM Series has a Windows-based interface that allows users to set up and configure the iSCSI SAN. The software lets them consolidate all storage volumes into a single pool. Further, the software monitors capacity use and throughput, and can balance them by dynamically migrating volumes when necessary. StorMagic's iSCSI storage software uses RAID and snapshot technologies for backing up and protecting the system.
A number of other vendors offer iSCSI storage arrays for SMBs. Among them are Dell, HP, EqualLogic and LeftHand Networks.

StorMagic was founded by veterans of Eurologic, Adaptec and Elipsan in April. The company is privately funded.

Its software starts at $8,000.