[AusNOG] SAN - NetApp vs EMC vs EqualLogic (kinda off topic)

[Jonathan Thorpe]

Hi James,

It might help if you tell us what kind of storage capacity and what you'll be using it with. Do you have any existing iSCSI infrastructure - any problems with it?

I've worked with all of the ones you mentioned on various projects when I worked for Citrix (XenServer) and all had their own positives and negatives, but it largely depends on what you intend on using it with.

A few comments on each (anyone please feel free to disagree):
	NetApp: Highly versatile - can be used as a NFS/CIFS appliance as well as an iSCSI SAN (although you pay for licensing). NetApp claim that RAID-DP's (proprietary form of RAID similar to RAID-6) performance is comparable to RAID-10, but with the RAID overhead efficiency of RAID-6. I've never put the performance to the test though.

	Equallogic: I've found Dell to be the most common reseller of these and this appears to allow them to offer reasonable pricing. One thing to be very careful of is to see if they can do active/active multipathing. When I worked with them about 6 months ago, it was strictly active/passive (i.e. you couldn't configure different LUNs to different controllers to spread the load).

	EMC: Generally very solid, but there's licensing for just about every component (PowerPath, drive expansion etc). Make sure these costs are understood upfront.

Other options are the Dell MD3000i and IBM DS3000 and DS4000 series - these are all based on LSI controllers and are widely supported as well.

Kind Regards,
Jonathan


-----Original Message-----
From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of James Braunegg
Sent: Wednesday, 14 July 2010 8:51 PM
To: ausnog at ausnog.net
Subject: [AusNOG] SAN - NetApp vs EMC vs EqualLogic (kinda off topic)

Hey guys were in the market for a new iSCSI SAN, I know this list is mainly about networking but we are looking at acquiring another SAN (network storage) Does anyone have any suggestions or know any good Melbourne based sales rep from NetApp, EMC or EqualLogic.

I'm currently only looking at iSCSI not FC for this application.

Kindest Regards

James Braunegg
W:  1300 769 972  |  M:  0488 997 207 |  D:  (03) 9751 7616
E:   james.braunegg at micron21.com  |  ABN:  85 126 029 203   


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