Of course, a setup like this doesnt come cheap. According to James Wilson, HPs worldwide XP disk array product manager, a customer will need at least three XP disk arrays, as well as the Metrocluster and Continental Cluster software and the software to tie the whole solution together. All in all, he says, the total package -- including DWDM equipment, SAN extension hardware, Fibre Channel switches, storage, and servers -- will cost between $6 million and $20 million.
"This is a non-trivial solution," he says. [Ed. note: We think he means "super-expensive solution."] "If the customer is going to go to this kind of effort, they have to get back into real production, not pretend production... They want to implement a real production-capable solution at each of the three sites."
Wilson says that HP completed the software to pull this offering together in May, and that it has a number of potential customers evaluating it. Initially, he says, HP customers currently using the companys two-site replication solutions will probably sign up to add a third site. "I think it will build gradually," he says. "This is not an inexpensive solution. Enterprise-class decisions are usually really well thought out... Its going to take a little while for these things to roll out."
HP isnt the only storage vendor going after the very high-end disaster recovery space. Yesterday, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) announced several software enhancements for its Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF), offering asynchronous replication over thousands of miles for disaster recovery (see EMC Debuts DMX, Part Deux). And in May, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced that it would be adding multi-hop replication capabilities to its Enterprise Storage Server (a.k.a. Shark) (see IBM Pushes Shark's Copy Buttons).
"Fundamentally, youre going to see everybody try to fill that void in their offerings," says Dave Purdy, EMCs director of business continuity, insisting that EMC has been offering a mix of synchronous and asynchronous replication for four years now.
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