There aren't many vendors that will do block de-dupe (as a standard feature) other than Netapp.
Lefthand is nice kit, my biggest reservation (and of course this is not aimed solely to Lefthand) is that all it does is iSCSI. The good things are it's modular, you can tier (SATA and SAS) and as you add nodes you add redundancy and performance, and of course you get all the licenses included. Personally I'd go grab a spare box, slap ESXi on it, download the Lefthand VSA and give it a try - it's no different from the hardware SAN and you might find that it's an ideal fit for your environment as you can use one or both of your existing servers rather than having to buy a hardware SAN that you may not get close to utilizing. I agree with Jonathan in that it's very easy to get bogged down when you don't have a nailed on set of requirements, you just want to get the best bang for your buck and you have to spend wisely (I know as I'm in the SAN market right now). From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: 13 September 2010 18:18 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: SAN vendors Ok... good questions. I'm looking for about 5 terabytes useable to start. I probably won't use half of that immediately, but I can use some of that for snapshots and growth. As for features, I'm not sure what features are available, but some I know are available and are interesting to me are dedupe, ISCSI, snapshots, thin provisioning. Dedupe is in the "nice to have, but not necessary" category. Performance, well, to start with, this will be mainly an overgrown file server, but I plan on bringing email in-house, and the IBM rep suggested I might want to virtualize my two servers and put VMWare on them, as they are seriously under-utilized right now (our most used server is at like 15% CPU utilization, and that's running file/print/DC/DHCP/DNS/antivirus on the one box.) The IBM rep's suggestions sound good, as far as virtualizing the servers, but not until I have a SAN in place. J Anyway, WRT the SAN, it will likely be the place where the virtualized DCs are stored, but they will be running off the existing hardware. The email will likely be Kerio Connect (pretty much guaranteed, if I have anything to say about it) and I don't think it uses a database. I talked to a Kerio rep last week and he assured me that having the mail store on a SAN is very well supported, so I have no qualms about that. Between redirecting people's "My Documents" folders to the network (and by that, I mean a SAN) and email, I expect to use up ½ to 2/3 of the proposed 5 Tb. From: Paul Hutchings [mailto:paul.hutchi...@mira.co.uk] Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 12:55 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: SAN vendors John, what do you need? Capacity? Expansion? Features (now and potentially future)? Performance? From: John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] Sent: 13 September 2010 17:49 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: SAN vendors Ok, I'm still in the market for a SAN. I got an IBM rep trying to sell me one of their SANs (rebranded LSI Logic) and I have an HP vendor trying to sell me a LeftHand. On the one hand (no pun intended,) the LeftHand comes with pretty much everything I would ever want built-into the price. On the other hand, the IBM is a dual-controller unit and I can just add drives as I need them where with the LeftHand I'd be adding intelligence each time I upgraded. There are pros and cons to each. I think both are similarly priced (although the LeftHand solution may be a bit more expensive up-front.) Not trying to start a flame war here, but I'm getting overwhelmed here... If both had similar capabilities, what would you recommend here? Anyone else I should be looking at in the "Budget SAN" range (<$30K for one SAN, including setup, maintenance, etc.) ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ________________________________ MIRA Ltd Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England Registered in England and Wales No. 402570 VAT Registration GB 114 5409 96 The contents of this e-mail are confidential and are solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please delete it and notify us either by e-mail, telephone or fax. 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