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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
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