1) Never had any business with Xiotech but I can confirm both Equallogic and DataCore are providers of a very mature technology and excellent service. Had a pleasure to have a phone conversation with Paula Long (being ex-EQL at that time) and she had really impressed me!
Both companies are between good and perfect but both are actually far far away from SMB and entry level Enterprise market you probably belong to. Can tell you why exactly in private but not here
2) I would not consider StarWind as "el cheapo" solution. You always need to calculate hidden costs. With EQL you get everything in one package "all inclusive" style: hardware, software and installation labor. With StarWind you need to pick up proper hardware, pay for it, pick up proper OS, pay for it, pick up StarWind SKU, install everything & configure and pay for StarWind. So to StarWind costs you need to add:
a) Hardware expenses
b) OS license
and
c) Human time
Are they cons or pros? Let's find out! You do get quite a lot of benefits however compared to EQL and other entirely SAN solution:
a) Hardware expenses. You can deal with the hardware you're familiar with. Have positive experience with Dell? Go Dell! Putting SuperMicro boards into all your servers during last 20 years? Go SM! Excellent flexibility and a real bargain prices on hard. 2TB hard disk still takes $100 from your budget and not $500 your SAN vendor is willing to charge you for "just because" it can do it. So picking up custom hardware would result getting more RAM, disk space and faster CPU cycles compared to entirely hardware solution SAN vendor sells under it's name.
BENEFITS: FLEXIBILITY, PERFORMANCE and PRICE.
b) OS license. You can do nothing with EQL firmware but you can perfectly re-cycle your Windows Server 2008 R2 license you've paid for once. Even more you can put say auxiliary Exchange Server on the same machine running StarWind and they would co-exist just fine. Something you can never do with EQL as it's SAN dedicated thing. Good news: StarWind can run on top of Hyper-V so you don't need to pay for OS license if you don't want to. And more good news: we'll represent Linux-based version soon. After all b) starts to get less and less important now.
BENEFITS: OS LICENSE RE-CYCLE OR RE-USE, NO PAID OS AT ALL.
c) Human time. You get ready box from EQL and you need to configure everything yourself going StarWind way. Is it good or not? Well... It depends! It's time consuming but you finally get trained engineer who understands the way our SAN works. Does it worth extra time? It's you who should decide. For me it's a benefit
BENEFITS: SAN ADMINISTRATOR IS DEALING WITH KNOWN SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE AND NOT BLACK BOX HE HAS NO CLUE WHAT TO DO WITH IF IT DOES NOT BOOT.
Let's now shoot down your list:
1) Performance. Spending less money you can always build machine running circles around EQL solution. We do scale up to 2 nodes nearly linearly now, would add 3 quite soon and grid architecture close to Fall 2011. I don't see any movements in this directly from EQL now...
2) Software we use as a backbone is Windows OS. It has MILLIONS more instances running compared to EQL firmware.
3) The same about dedicated hardware (MIPS-based AFAIR) EQL use and COTS x86 we deal with. See single Intel server mobo you'd probably pick up for your SAN appliance is tested MUCH harder then any proprietary hardware on Earth.
I would comment about performance and my vision answering your second query below...
robnicholson wrote:I suspect this is a simple question with a complex answer. We're in the market for a SAN as we a) need more disk space, b) want to improve flexibility in virtualisaion and expansion and c) want to mitigate against hardware failure for better business continutity.
So we've got quotes in for EqualLogic and Xiotech. Both very good with some great reviews & feedback from users. But they are not what you would exactly call cheap! In fact, "taking the micky" might pop up.
We looked at DataCore and liked the product but once again, not the price.
I happened upon StarWind whilst researching the project. Even tried the trial on a spare VM with 8TB eSATA disk enclosure. It was simple to use which I loved. Suspect there is a lot of extra complexity in the SAN world that's there to confuse.
But as for the price - well, it's wonderful. Not got UK pricing from you yet but saw some US prices and rough back of envelope calculation gives me a PowerEdge R710, dual CPU, 8GB RAM, Windows 2008, 8 x 600GB 10k 600GB (~4TB usuable with RAID) for £6000. Add in the most expensive StarWind license and I doubt I'd be spending more than £10k.
Compare this with the £25k+ that I'm been quoted for EqualLogic and Xiotech and it's not surprised I'm interested in StarWind. Heck, for £25k, I could have the same set-up in our UK and USA offices.
But... I worry about the old adage of "You get what you pay for"...
So after waffling on there for a while, this is an open and I hope honest question:
How does would StarWind on something like the above (suspect you'll say more RAM but heck, that adds another £1k) compare with hardware SANS like EqualLogic & Xiotech on the following?
1. Performance (way top of list)
2. Software reliability
3. Hard reliability (appreciate this is mainly outside of your control but others may know)
Cheers, Rob.
PS. Also love the idea that we can have a split 4TB SAS fast drives but also mix with a cheap-as-chips eSATA disk enclosure if we get the right StarWind license.
