First or replacement SAN - what are the most important requirements?

[NimbleStorage]

Hi all

If you were in the market for your first SAN or for a replacement SAN what would be your key requirements and in what order of importance?

 

EG:

Performance

Simple to set up

Easy to manage

Future proofed simple scaling

First class support

Price per TB / Price per IO

Total cost of ownership - space / power etc

Word of mouth recommendation

 

Interested to see answers and to see if there is a common theme!

 

Many thx

[seawolf]

Hi all

If you were in the market for your first SAN or for a replacement SAN what would be your key requirements and in what order of importance?

 

EG:

Performance

Simple to set up

Easy to manage

Future proofed simple scaling

First class support

Price per TB / Price per IO

Total cost of ownership - space / power etc

Word of mouth recommendation

 

Interested to see answers and to see if there is a common theme!

 

Many thx

 

1. Performance - When it comes to SANs, storage is relatively cheap, but performance is expensive.

2. Price per IO - Providing great performance for the $ or £ is the real challenge

3. Great support that doesn't cost a boatload

4. Expandable- The ability to upgrade storage with another drive tray or adding larger capacity disks as they become available, some systems provide great performance, but no way to expand the storage

5. Ease of setup and management - I would put these in the same basket because one without the other just really won't do these days.

6. Scalability - the ability to ramp up performance beyond the base configuration such as adding RAM, extra read/write caches, or additional 10GbE NICS or to go from 1Gb to 10Gb to 40Gb on the same unit.

[NimbleStorage]

Thx Seawolf. All very good points and useful feedback.

 

Any other takers out there?