[CentOS] ISCSI SAN suggestion

Mon Nov 20 14:27:01 UTC 2006
Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik at iki.fi>

On Mon, Nov 20, 2006 at 01:13:30PM +0200, Radu Radutiu wrote:
> Sorry for the off-topic question but I need advice on a buying a ISCSI
> SAN for 4-6 servers running CentOS 4.4 .The main  purpose for the SAN
> is to store email accounts (that will be accessed by imap - dovecot)
> and other documents. Minimal redundancy is required (e.g. dual power
> supplies, battery backed write cache or mirrored controllers) and
> price for a 2 TB configuration should be under $ 10000.
> Right now the short list includes Promise VTrack M300i and Dell/EMC  AX150i.
> Do you have any experience with any of these models or can recommend a
> similar SAN that will meet the above requirements?
> 

I have bad experience of the Promise M500i.. loosing configuration on
reboot, whole array crashing when one drive fails, locking problems crashing
the UI (or blocking the use of it), general feeling of being extremely
version 0.0.1. 

I have been using Equallogic PS-series arrays, and they are excellent: fast,
easy to use, stable, reliable and Equallogic has great support.. Promise has
really sucky support (based on my experiences). But of course the price tag
of Equallogic is something different compared to Promise.. You get what you pay for..

If you wanna play with DIY solutions try Linux iSCSI Enterprise Target.. and
maybe openfiler. 

-- Pasi

> Regards,
> 
> Radu