Dell Offers High-End Features At Low-End PricesDell Offers High-End Features At Low-End Prices

As Dell Computer tries to make price inroads in the storage market, it will unveil this week beefy network-attached storage at low prices. Other storage vendors could try to compete on price with Dell's 700 series, but it's not clear their products would have the same high-end features as Dell's.

Dell will ship a low-end PowerVault 725N storage system that can grow to meet demand. The rack-mounted PowerVault 775N and tower-configured PowerVault 770N will store up to 8 terabytes of data internally and operate on a Dell-EMC storage area network that can store up to 40 terabytes of data. Prices start at $1,800 for a system for workgroups and $5,000 for data centers.

Users can manage files from just about any client, including Linux, NetWare, and Unix. Plus, for the first time in a Dell NAS system, users can take snapshot copies of data for backup purposes while a network remains up and running.

Carl Moser, owner and president of Excel Mortgage, replaced a server with two Dell NAS systems with RAID redundancy for $2,400 each, which he says was lower than other RAID products. NAS systems "make it quicker to get information, and they're easy to set up," Moser says. "I hooked them up myself."