Few SAN Questions.

[Vanilla]

No, its a Celera SAN device, with iSCSI and FC.

The NS series is a NAS. The NS gateway series integrates in to a Symmetrix/Clariion (SAN) for the storage, the NS integrated has it's own disks. The NSX is it's own beast and I'm guessing (although I haven't touched it), is the DMX of the EMC NAS world (Vanilla can fill this bit in).

The Celerra also has it's own FS and uses DART. Whilst it does support FC/iSCSI, it's an IP storage box and thus NAS like.

Clariion - EMC Mid range SAN. FC and iSCSI on the same array (CX4 is the latest, CX4-120, CX4-240)

Celerra - EMC NAS, with iSCSI and FC.

Some NS models can have FC ports added to allow FC connected hosts to access the array which is probably where the confusion comes from.

Behind every integrated EMC NAS device (not gateway) is an EMC Clariion. All they've done is open up some of the FC ports on the Clariion for direct use. I believe it was brought around because so many people needed SAN and NAS and they were buying a separate Clariion and the NS gateway. EMC have just taken the integrated (which is a pre-built Clariion and NS gateway) and given out some FC ports.

Technically it's FC SAN attached storage, totally bypassing the NAS, but these ports are very limited - Windows and Unix hosts only, etc.

 

[Deathwish]

Some good info in this thread. Thanks guys

We have had a demo from Dell on the 5000 Equalogic kit and it looked ok, wasn't impressed with the Java console though, like the OnTAP web interface better.

I think we'll end up virtualising up to 80 servers, with about 70% of those in the low-use end of the spectrum (No Exchange).

 

[Vtec9k]

I've almost finished a Compellent SAN deployment at my company. Been a great bit of experience, perhaps not the biggest system with only 3 sites and ~50TB but I'll be glad when it's all over and holiday time

Personally I can't say enough good things about Compellent, we chose them over EMC and Netapp after some pretty hard negotiation. Fantastic technology that really highlights some major issues with more traditional SAN vendors.

I'd recommend you to at least take a look at them. However I do think if your just talking about storing VM images on it then you probably won't make the most of the strengths.