SAN Update 4

I've spent the week checking references and weighing the different SAN options available. This has been a much tougher decision than I thought it would be a few weeks ago.

I did talk with Debi Cooper with M&A Technology, along with Jeff Horne of D-Link. We had a good conversation about their technology. The D-Link DSN-3200 has 15 storage bays for SATA drives and a whopping 8 1GB ports. Redundancy is provided by a second DSN-3200 whose replication is handled by Symantec VERITAS Storage Foundation. You can setup volumes on individual disks, place a volume on a single RAID array, or place multiple volumes on a RAID array; so it is fairly flexible. As I understood, the Veritas Storage Foundation could asynchronously and synchronously replicate data to a remote and/or local unit for data protection and disaster recovery. I am a little apprehensive about the Veritas software, which will run on another computer and perform the synchronizing. I did talk to a customer who implemented a DSN-3200 about 3 weeks ago. They also looked at a Siafu solution but chose this solution because of its overall value. They have only 7 of the drive bays populated with 750GB drives and love the solution. This will probably not be the solution that I choose for our implementation because of expandability concerns and concerns about Veritas Storage Foundation. The DSN-3200 is very economical and I would still recommend it be placed on your research list if looking for a SAN.

I also asked for references from EqualLogic and Left Hand. I talked with Justin Smith at Second Baptist Church in Houston and also talked with Jason Powell of Granger Community Church. Both had great things to say about EqualLogic and both have had great experiences with the product. Second is only using their PS300E for databases and Granger has moved most of their data and 20 virtual machines to their PS100E. Both have had great experiences with the product and will be expanding in the future. Jason also talked about EqualLogic's responsiveness to the drive problems they encountered several months ago.

I also talked with Patrick Trela of Prestonwood Baptist Church; they are running a 19TB total storage LeftHand solution. Most of their units are NSM160s and they are running in a Campus SAN environment for disaster recovery. Patrick had great things to say about Left Hand and we had a good conversation. I didn't think Prestonwood was an apple to apple comparison since they have 3 times everything that we have so I asked for another reference. I was directed to Bob Samson IT Director of UT – Arlington Campus Library. They have been a Left Hand customer for 3 years and have about 10TB raw storage. They have had a few problems over the years but have had a great impression of Left Hand's support.

Tomorrow's the decision day. I have received about 10 phone messages the last 2 days in regards to the RFP. I know which direction I am going but I'll wait until I have a PO in-hand before announcing the decision.

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Why would it take FOUR hours on the phone with Microsoft. Why does it always take so long???