Dell, Inc. yesterday announced immediate availability of its new PowerVault direct attached storage server.

The PowerVault MD1000 is a 3U Serial-Attached Storage disk based storage server with the capabilities to accomodate up to fifteen SAS 3.5-inch hard drives at 10k or 15k RPM. Drives can range in capacties from 36GB to 300GB on the SAS interface with a maximum aggregate storage capacity of 4.5TB with RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and 50. With the optional PERC 5/E RAID controller the maximum capacity is brought to 45 hard drives at 13.5TB of storage capacity across three MD1000 rackmount units.

The MD1000 features redundant hot-pluggable power supplies, up to two 12.0Gbps interfaces and and the ability to split up the drives into two groups to handle two different servers simultaneously.

Like all Dell products, the MD1000 can be configured to taste with options such as number of PERC 5/E controllers (atleast 1 is required for operation) and the number and capacity of drives the server will come with (atleast 2 are required for operation with maximum physical capacity of 15 drives in each 3U server.

Additional options include UPS systems, spare hard drives in any capacities, spare batteries for the PERC 5/E controller and support and installation services. The bare minimum price for the MD1000 configured with two 36GB drives, and the bare minimum for service and support will come to a subtotal of about $3570 while adding all of the options and choosing the highest service and support package will bring the price to around $18,900. This one probably isn't for storing a few MP3s and videos of your European adventure off your digital camera.