I agree with everyone else, identify your drivers (Needs) and then evaluate those needs. It's a harder process than it sounds, but essential when operating at this level of cost.
Since you have not done that, and you obviously need something. I would go with the synology, several models, lots of expansion and supports ISCSI, works great for file serving, we have several ISCSI LUNS connected for performing system state backups on our 2008 Servers. Doesn't miss a beat and has quite a few features built into it. Like 4TB of space for less than $2500.00 Depending on raid config.. For that kind of savings you can truly identify all of your needs, and when the time comes you haven't dropped a load and locked yourself into any particular method. Greg From: Jeff Steward [mailto:jstew...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 10:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SAN question I'm bored, I'll bite. Like others here, I'm not convinced you even need a SAN or even NAS. You can probably make use of DAS. To even begin to make an attempt to give you more guidance we need: How many users will be hitting the file server. What type of file i/o are we talking about? Have you benchmarked your current performance? How much storage do you currently have and how much do you think you will need to meet anticipated growth over the next 24 to 36 months. If you move to providing in-house Exchange, how many users will you be hosting? How many are heavy duty users versus light duty? That's a start, answers to those questions will help us help you further. -Jeff Steward On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 10:16 AM, John Aldrich <jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com<mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com>> wrote: Ok, guys. I'm trying to narrow down my many choices with regards to our on-going search for a SAN manufacturer. I'd like your thoughts on the whole question of adding more intelligence vs just adding more disks. i.e. the EQ vs LeftHand models. I can see arguments to be made for both models. I'll tell you that, initially, the SAN is going to be a glorified file server, however, we plan on hosting our email data store on the SAN when we bring email in-house later on. I've already verified with the email vendor that I hope to use that this is not a problem, so that's a non-issue. Other than that, the only database we would store on the SAN would possibly be the database from our Vipre install, although initially that would stay on the local storage. So, I'd like to see some discussions of the benefits of just adding a tray of "dumb drives" or adding a complete controller along with the drives (a la LeftHand.) I just don't know enough about the benefits of each model to know what would work best for us. I'm hoping that you guys who are more experienced would give me the benefit of your knowledge. Thanks, John Aldrich IT Manager, Blueridge Carpet 706-276-2001, Ext. 2233 ~ 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<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ 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<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ 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
