I use a Netapp 2050 cluster and i'm unhappy about the performance. I also use a Sun 7110 as NFS ESXi Storage. You can't compare it. The S7110 is about 7 to 10 times faster in MB/s and about 4 times faster in IOPS. My problem is, that I can't use the S7110 as CIFS Storage.
We look for a better CIFS storage like Sun7420 or Netapp 3240, but I can't compare it. What I know is, Netapp every time uses less memory, old CPU, small CPU in their system. I prefer Sun, but I do not know how good CIFS work?