SAN buyers, do your homework

SAN buyers, do your homework

Last week a friend asked me what iSCSI storage to buy for a new SAN.

I get polled quite often on this, especially on iSCSI storage. It’s not that people who look at FC SANs don’t ask, but usually they have a network already in place and their questions are more focused on specifics.

It turns out that my friend was asking not for himself but for one of his friends, which started a long back and fort exchange to understand what where the basic requirements and how much money was the person prepared or allowed to spend.

It always surprises me that many people who are getting ready to buy iSCSI storage generally do a good job defining their technical requirements but often ignore or pay little attention to trivial things such as having budget capacity consistent with those requirements.

Perhaps that’s because iSCSI storage has been often described as an “affordable” alternative to FC, sort of a Yugo SAN. While it’s true that generally speaking iSCSI storage cost less than comparable FC configurations, the price-gap between different entry-level iSCSI SANs solutions is wide enough to break a budget.

Therefore, if you don’t provision proper budget figures you might end up having to choose a less fitting solution than what your technical requirements and your selection suggests.

Don’t just take my word on this but read what the IT Director of Sagemont Church in Houston, who just finished a carefully thought selection of SAN gear, has to say in his churchIT blog:

A note to SAN buyers, do your homework. I know that is one of those “Duh!” statements but be thorough in your research, before budgeting. When I budgeted this project a few months ago, I looked at iSCSI solutions, but I never fully grasped the available technologies. I was really set on an “old school” EMC, HP or IBM iSCSI solution. I’ve seen the Left Hand and EqualLogic solutions and either one, with their faults, is still light years ahead of, most of, the competition. This includes Fibre Channel.

As you can find out reading his blog, the IT Director of Sagemont Church was able to work around budget constraints for his new SAN.

From what I understand, my friend’s friend has to stay within budget and may have to settle for what churchIT calls “old school iSCSI solutions”.