I wrote a few months ago about my company’s quest to implement a storage area network.
We’ve arrived at a clear and definitive choice. After initially looking at about seven vendors, we narrowed down our search to three contenders: Xiotech, Left Hand Networks, and EqualLogic. Xiotech was eliminated first – they simply didn’t fit into our budget plan. We liked the product but it was way out of range for us.
Left Hand and EqualLogic both agreed to provide a demo unit for 30 days, although Left Hand was much harder to convince. When we asked for the demo product, they reluctantly agreed after much hem-hawing and several phone conferences. EqualLogic provided a demo unit that actually matched the specs of the quote we had with them, while Left Hand provided a unit that differed from the one we were being quoted. That meant if we decided to stay with Left Hand, we’d have to switch units later or change our mind about the product we were buying.
Our EqualLogic box was set up and configured in less than two hours, with all the storage volumes we wanted to create functional and correctly attached to our IBM blade server.
Left Hand, however, proved to be more of a challenge. We struggled for hours trying to connect and properly configure the Left Hand product so it would communicate with the rest of our network. Ultimately, although Left Hand’s engineers made a valiant effort trying to help us get started, we gave up. Left Hand’s product forced us to jump through hoops trying to get our HBAs configured so we could create LUNs that could be accessed by our blade server.
We actually got one LUN configured and attached after hours of painstaking phone banter, but we found that we could only use one of our two HBAs at a time and Left Hand had no resolution imminent for that problem. This meant that our data pipe would have been halved. We also had issues trying to get additional LUNs recognized.
The EqualLogic PS300E became our clear winner after we ran Jet Stress to ensure our Exchange server would be able to handle heavy loads. The first trial failed. We put in a call to EqualLogic and within an hour, we had three of their employees on the phone helping us analyze why Jet Stress had failed. A few adjustments later, or second Jet Stress test passed with flying colors.
For our company, EqualLogic was the clear choice, offering us the best combination of features, attractive pricing, storage space and most importantly – a company that clearly cares about its customers.