Re: Care to share on LeftHand?

[Pete Howard]

Netapp is not in the category of "buy the whole thing over again when you need more disk space". Even the smaller units in the 2000 series are easily expandable by adding disk shelves. The 2050 which is comparable to the Eql PS4000 can scale to about 108 disks which comes to 5 external shelves. Same thing with several flavors from EMC, HP and others. The Eql solution is expanded with another array but its price competitive with a netapp shelf last I knew and you get more controllers and network with it. 

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From: John Aldrich <jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com>
To: NT System Admin Issues <ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com>
Sent: Wed, April 7, 2010 10:27:59 AM
Subject: RE: Care to share on LeftHand?

I’m in a similar position, as I’ve mentioned here several times. J My only problem with things like NetApp and Equallogic is that they want you to buy the whole thing over again when you need more disk space, etc. One of the benefits of looking at second-tier manufacturers is that they often will not make you buy the whole thing over again. If there’s any chance you’ll want more disk space in the next couple or three years, you might look for a lower-cost vendor who offers the option to just add a tray of drives (JBOD) or an “intelligent” tray of drives. Several second-tier vendors have offered that option to me.

Of course, I am not in a position to make a choice right now, but if I did, I would probably go with someone like Scaled Computing as they offer the “intelligent tray of drives” option for upgrades and don’t make you buy the whole thing again. I don’t have a quote from the local reseller yet, but it’s going to be close to my current expected ceiling of $30K for two SANs installed.

 

 

From: Damien Solodow [mailto:damien.solo...@harrison.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 10:20 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Care to share on LeftHand?

 

We’re in the process of evaluating some replacement options for an aging EVA 4000.

 

So far I’m pretty partial to the Equallogic arrays and the NetApp offerings, but our HP reseller is making a lot of noise about a P4000 array (formerly LeftHand).

 

I’m curious if anyone has firsthand experience with the LeftHand arrays that they’d care to share with the class.

 

Based on what I’ve seen it sounds like the arrays are basically just low to mid range servers with local attached storage that run an appliance OS. Sort of like a souped up Starwind implementation. ;)

 

DAMIEN SOLODOW

Systems Engineer

317.217.6881 (office)

317.217.6851 (fax)

HARRISON COLLEGE

603 East Washington Street

Suite 600

Indianapolis, IN 46204-2646

www.harrison.edu