It always comes down to resources.

So I have a couple of cool articles coming up that I'd like to get a jump on, and I have a dying old NSS NAS that I need to replace.

The problem is that I have a rocking brand-new Equalogic iSCSI-enabled SAN that is 'the dream box' as far as we can tell for SANs. And I have a rocking Adaptec/SNAP 18000 that is the dream box for NAS as far as we can tell. And I have uses for both.

But Steve Hill is using them for an Affordable IT article to help people on the lower end understand their storage choices... And I need them now.

I'd like to put the SNAP in to replace my poor old 650 Gig NSS before the thing finally gasps it's last. We're nursing it along with daily reboots right now.

And I'd like to set up the EqualLogic for my upcoming Storage Security article as the SAN that we use for the test bed. I've got a Cisco 9216 and a JMR Electronics SAN target I can put together to make the testbed, but new is good :-)

The good news is that if all goes right, I should have an Apple XServe RAID SAN in the lab soon too, then I could use that behind the Cisco along with the EqualLogic for SAN security. The XServe and the EqualLogic don't need a SAN Switch, but I want a complete architecture to take pieces out of while testing security products. If there's already a switch there, then when I run a test against Brocade security applications, I just replace the switch... And awaaaay we go!

Hopefully Steve is done soon. We're having problems with storage testing tools that it looks like we resolved this evening. At least resolved enough to get solid test results. Our test boxes really need to be reinstalled - it looks like that was part of our test tool problem. One domain, many disparate DNS servers. Have to put reinstalling those near the top of the "to do" list... Perhaps right after replacing the NSS.