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Of Storage Systems, Software, Upgrades And TCO: Page 2 of 2

Compare that with my experience with some major vendors and Windows Storage Server-based NAS appliances. When I got to the college I worked for, they had a WSS-based NAS from a major vendor running the Windows 2000 version of WSS. It was the year 2006 at the time, so I called the vendor and discovered that even though Microsoft made 32-bit versions of WSS 2003, the vendor was only offering Version 2003 on 64-bit systems and there was no upgrade for this 2-year-old NAS.

Today, major vendors will sell WSS 2008 to WSS 2008 R2 upgrades. However, if you bought your NAS in early 2009, it was still running WSS 2003 because WSS 2008 wasn't released to OEMs until May 2009, and the vendor won't sell an upgrade.

So, in addition to price and performance, take a good hard look at your prospective vendor's upgrade policies. They could have a major impact on how long you can run a system and its total cost of ownership.