Enterprise Storage solutions - experiences?

[8bit]

Hi all,

At my work we currently have a tender out to replace our two aging SANs (one for Windows, one for Linux/UNIX) with a single, consolidated SAN/NAS hybrid solution. We have bids in from 4 vendors and I was hoping maybe some folks from here have worked on similar setups and maybe had some impartial information to share. Obviously I'm a little bit limited in terms of what I'm allowed to say but the basic requirements are:

Minimum 51TB raw capacity initially, scalable to 215TB over three years
Non-disruptive backups using 2-tiered solution (VTL and physical tape) using NetBackup
No SPOF - redundant switching fabric, redundant NAS heads (where applicable)
Integration with existing EMC DiskXtender (Centera back-end) architecture

At present, the options on the table are:

• HP - EVA8100 arrays, Polyserve NAS clustered gateway software running on multiple Linux and Windows hosts, HP9000 Virtual tape library, ESL712e physical tape library, HP StorageWorks 4/256 SAN Director switches
  
• Sun - ST9985V and ST6540 arrays, ST5320 NAS clustered gateways, VTL1202 virtual tape library, SL500 physical tape library, Cisco MDS9222i fibre-channel switches
  
• EMC - CLARiiON CX3-80 arrays, Celerra NS80G filer/gateways, EMC EDL4206 virtual tape library, Scalar i2000 physical tape library, EMC-badged Brocade FC switches
  
• IBM/NetApp - IBM N Series N7700 Metrocluster array and filer, IBM TS7520 Virtual tape library, TS3310 physical tape library, Brocade FC Switches

If anyone has experience (positive, negative or indifferent) of working on any of the above then I'd really like to hear about it!

Thanks in advance,
8bit

[derchris]

I would go for the Sun option.
They have a 25% offer at the moment, and you can test it for 60 days with no costs.
Not sure if all the Sun gear is in for this offer.

From the NetBackup side, the Sun stuff will work for sure. But so should the rest.
Are you planning on using VxVM for it aswell?
I can check if these are supported.

[8bit]

Luckily I'm away from all the commercial side of the tendering process so I just have to consider the technical bits. Whatever solution we select is subject to a site acceptance test so if we're not happy with it at any point we're able to pull it all out and send it back and go to another vendor.

We're not planning using VxVM. Have you any technical experience with any of the above kit?

[Moby-Dick]

we run multiple EVA8100's with McData Director fabric switches ( running a mixture of FC and F-ATA disks )- they are reasonably easy to admin and should fit the bill

feel free to pm me with other info you wont want to post on the forums , I'll pass them onto our storage team ( I just handle most of the admin side of things )

We also have some HP XP series kit but , while its very powerfull, I think its overkill