Hi all,
I need to implement an iSCSI SAN, for shared storage in preparation for our future virtualization project (we decided the SAN would be phase 1, before the hosts, as we plan for the virtual disks to live on the SAN instead of local storage). In the past, I have set up OpenFiler and it worked perfectly. This time, I am leaning towards Nexenta Core - it doesn't have the 18TB limit that NexentaStor has, plus I don't have to worry about RAID or OS support of RAID. However which OS I choose doesn't really matter as that's not what this question is about - my point is that there are open source, production-ready OS's to handle the task.
However, all my industry reading points to commercial solutions, such as NetApp, EMC, Equalogic, now even Drobo. Since my only experience is with OpenFiler, what types of advantages do these products have? They are much more expensive, and I am sure they are nice, but are they any more redundant, or do the job any better, than a regular server with dual power supplies can with Nexenta?
I just need a bit of help wading through all the options. Budget is extremely important here. I need to go as cheap as I can, basically, though obviously it still needs to be a stable, reliable solution. Thanks for your help.
EDIT: There seems to be some confusion - by DIY, I do not mean assembling servers myself. I mean, buying off-the-shelf servers and using something like FreeNAS, Openfiler, Nexenta, etc.
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