Hello!
We are putting together a basic server consolidation solution: consolidating a half-dozen file and utility servers and a single small database server for abou 25 office users. To start with, we are looking at two or three host servers and a storage array. In the future, however, we would like to evaluate desktop virtualization for these users, and if possible we would like to be able to use the same SAN with, say, 6 host servers to handle this.
We do not need much in the way of space or IOPS: Currently, the servers have less than 300GB of space, and no performance complaints even with their current 6+-year-old servers. We do, however, want something that is drop-dead reliable.
The problem we are having is that there seems to be a big gap betwen the low end NAS appliances and the entry level SAN arrays. For example, you can find lots of iSCSI NAS appliances in the $2000 range (e.g. Iomega ix4-200d or QNAP TS-459) but they tend to be low performance (4 x SATA drives with 2 x GbE) and from personal experience they have questionable reliability: no hot-swap drives, no snapshotting, and they seem to handle a failed drive terribly, often by hanging the appliance.
Then there are entry-level SAN arrays (e.g. EMC CLARiiON AX4, NetApp FAS2020). These tend to correct the problems of the NAS appliances (12 x SAS or SATA drives with 4 - 8 x GBe or 4 x FC, snapshotting, hot-swap, even dual controllers), but at a tremendous increase in price: I'm getting quotes for bottom-end devices in the $18,000 - $20,000 range, and sometimes (such as the NetApp) they only have SATA drives!
Given our total budget, we have a storage budget in the neighborhood of $8000, but we could go as high as $10,000. However, we can't seem to find anything worthwhile in this price range. My question is: what SAN solutions are there in the $10,000 price range?
Our wish list would be:
10-12 Hot-swap 15k SAS Drives (bare 300GB drives are under $350; 12 of them would be about $4000)
At least 4 x GbE iSCSI ports
At least 2GB battery-backed cache
Support hot-spares
Drop-dead reliability!
VMware certified
Other things such as FC support, expansion disk shelves, dual controllers, etc. would certainly be appreciated, but obviously I know I'm going to have to lose something compared to the EMC and NetApp devices.
Regardless of my wish-list, I would be very interested in hearing about any quality storage solutions in the $8000 - $10,000 price range. I would especially like to hear from those of you that use such arrays, and how they handle heavy I/O loads or drive failure. I've heard (and experienced) too many issues with low-end arrays falling over under high I/O load or a failed drive.
Thank you for your input!
(For our 1U rack servers we simply use a $15 HP flash drive...) The blades will have no internal storage.
