Need help with buying our first SAN (never done this before)

[wasc]

Hi all, Hoping to get some pointers on where to look with getting our first San.

Basically we need two servers initially connected to a SAN, however the number of servers could potentially grow to 4 in the future. Can anyone give me any pointers on where to look. I've already left a message with our Dell account manager to give me a call back about the MD3000i which I believe supports iscsi but there may be cheaper or better options out there.

Thanks in advance.

 

[wasc]

What is it going to be used for?

Lol - I should have mentioned that shouldn't I.

It's going to be used for VMware ESXi. Effectively the 2 to 4 servers we'll have will be running VMWare images, which will be stored on the San. The vmware instances themselves will be performing various roles (some will be DC's, others will be MS TS servers, one will be running a lightly used SQL db. We're also considering testing Exchange 2007 on there as well)

 

[wasc]

Thanks for the long and informative reply. Appreciate you taking the time to help. I'll definately research those Soragetek arrays.