I'm looking at putting in an Equallogic PS4000E. Essentially for now we're talking a relatively low cost jump up from a "dumb" iSCSI array, using SATA disks for a specific requirement for bulk but low transaction storage.
In a year or so's time when our main SAN is replaced I'd be interested in getting a more highly specified Equallogic unit, using it as our primary box and moving our main production stuff onto it (we're nearly entirely virtualized already) and putting the PS4000 at the other end of our site as a replication/DR uni.
For now, whilst it's clearly best practise, I don't know if we actually need redundant switches, so what I'm looking for is recommendations on what may be a suitable switch to buy now, with a view to buying more from the same vendor if we standardize on Equallogic.
Dell PowerConnect are the obvious choice I guess. We already have a couple of 5424's in a rack servicing a "dumb" MD3000i at our DR site, we don't push them, they seem to do the job even if the web GUI does suck - I'm assuming they won't be sufficient should we end up utilizing EqualLogic heavily?
There seem to be lots of vendors out there from the names I know, Dell, Cisco, HP, then are lots of "niche" vendors - and I don't know what makes a good iSCSI switch.
We're currently on ESX 3.5 U4 and I would be expecting to be moving to vSphere when our main SAN and ESX boxes are replaced (essentially right now it aint broke so I'm not looking to fix it).
