Skip to main content

Storage/NAS Evals

We are looking for a strong NAS system, I'm leaning towards a clustered scale up/out system versus buying a box that I have to replace every 4 years. I think Isilon is the proven leader in this space, and we've selected them to go up against the king (Netapp). Here are the criteria we used to get it down to these two. We are looking into them in depth now.


 

Requirement

Sub-Feature

Weight

Architecture

  

  

  

Centralized Management

6

  

Clustered Device (NAS, Controller, and Power)

10

  

Appliance Model

8

  

Add storage with no downtime

10

  

Add bandwidth and nodes without downtime

10

  

Add cache without downtime (increase IO)

8

  

Auto balance IO across disks and connections

10

Security

  

  

  

AD Integration

10

Data Management

  

  

  

Tiered design 2 or 3 tier

8

  

Migration of data based on usage and other vars

8

  

Content aware

5

  

Ability to snapshot multiple times, and replicate a snap

10

  

Rapid snapshot

6

  

NDMP support

5

  

Backup Exec Support

10

Connectivity

  

  

  

CIFS

10

  

NFS

10

  

Replication at file/block

8

  

Optimization for WAN replication

10

  

Namespace virtualization and migration of namespaces

7

Management

  

  

  

Reporting via Web

8

  

Email reporting

6

  

Usage/compliance reporting per user (AD integration)

6

  

Monitoring and alerting of issues

8

  

Thin provisioning

5

General

  

  

  

Ease of administration

10

  

Ease of use

10

  

Configuration and setup

8

  

Documentation quality

5

  

Speed of client

8

  

Resources used by client

8

Company

  

  

  

Viability

10

  

Support

8

  

Price

10

Total Score

  

  

Comments

Anonymous said…
Have you considered BlueArc? Many (if not all) of the features you're describing here are easily met with BlueArc. Plus, you're looking for scale and performance, which BlueArc excels at quite nicely. http://www.bluearc.com
Monday, September 15, 2008 6:21:00 PM
Unknown said…
Funny you should mention that, we are looking at them, and I should have more info on that this week for my readers.

Thanks!
Monday, September 15, 2008 6:32:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dynatrace Growth Misinformation

For my valued readers: I wanted to point out some issues I’ve recently seen in the public domain. As a Gartner analyst, I heard many claims about 200% growth, and all kind of data points which have little basis in fact. When those vendors are asked what actual numbers they are basing those growth claims on, often the questions are dodged. Dynatrace, recently used the Gartner name and brand in a press release. In Its First Year as an Independent Company, Gartner Ranks Dynatrace #1 in APM Market http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12773790.htm I want to clarify the issues in their statements based on the actual Gartner facts published by Gartner in its Market Share data: Dynatrace says in their press release: “expand globally with more than three times the revenue of other new generation APM vendors” First, let’s look at how new the various technologies are: Dynatrace Data Center RUM (DCRUM) is based on the Adlex technology acquired in 2005, but was cr...
10 comments
Read more

Misunderstanding "Open Tracing" for the Enterprise

When first hearing of the OpenTracing project in 2016 there was excitement, finally an open standard for tracing. First, what is a trace? A trace is following a transaction from different services to build an end to end picture. The latency of each transaction segment is captured to determine which is slow, or causing performance issues. The trace may also include metadata such as metrics and logs, more on that later. Great, so if this is open this will solve all interoperability issues we have, and allow me to use multiple APM and tracing tools at once? It will help avoid vendor or project lock-in, unlock cloud services which are opaque or invisible? Nope! Why not? Today there are so many different implementations of tracing providing end to end transaction monitoring, and the reason why is that each project or vendor has different capabilities and use cases for the traces. Most tool users don't need to know the implementation details, but when manually instrumenting wi...
2 comments
Read more

IBM Pulse 2008 - Review

I spent Monday-Wednesday at IBM Pulse in Orlando. It was a good show, but quite a few of the sessions were full when I arrived. It was frustrating because they didn't offer them more than once. The morning sessions were mostly pie in the sky, and not very useful to me. I got to spend a lot of time with senior people in engineering, architecture, and acquisitions/strategy. I also got to meet people I knew from online or other dealings with IBM. Overall, the show was a good use of my time, and I found it enjoyable. Here are some of my highlights: ITM 6.2.1 improvements including agentless capabilities and such. New reporting framework based on BIRT which will be rolling forward. New UI which is being pushed and was on display from TBSM 4.2. Hearing about what other customers are up to (mostly bad decisions from what I've seen). Affirmation of ITNM (Precision) as a best of breed tool, with a excellent roadmap. Some things which are bad and make no sense: Focus on manufactur...
6 comments
Read more