The bank mentioned above is evaluating EqualLogic's product and says it will be another quarter or so before it makes a decision to buy. "Adding new storage shelves that play together seamlessly reduces the administrative overhead considerably," says the infrastructure manager in charge of storage at the bank. "Our systems engineer doesnt have to reconfigure disks, initialize them, and carve up the different RAID sets separately -- it can all be done automatically." He says EqualLogics storage unit is scalable from very small to multiterabyte configurations.
"Most of the other modular offerings on the market starting at the midsize for a rack-mount frame are $50,000 to $150,000 before youve even put the disks in," says our infrastructure manager. "With EqualLogic, you can add disks as you go and load balance across them. We were compelled by the lower installation costs as you go."
While the exact product details of EqualLogics system remain a closely guarded secret at this point, we do know that PeerStorage uses low-cost ATA disk drives and is based on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)'s iSCSI specification. "This makes the per-port cost lower than Fibre Channel, which is how they have brought down the costs," says the bank's storage manager. EqualLogic expects to start shipping its product sometime in the first half of 2003.
Interestingly, if the bank buys EqualLogic it will be for second-tier storage, keeping EMC for first-tier applications. Which raises the question: Is HP getting the boot? "We are still evaluating everything -- I am not in a position to say," the infrastructure manager says. "A purchase decision will depend on how EqualLogic plays out pushing this idea and getting customers."
Given that the system is IP-based, this is likely to be a slow process, as users gradually warm up to IP storage. Still, EqualLogic has top-tier backers that should keep it in the game for the foreseeable future.
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