- Nimble is making me a touch edgy. I like the performance they offer, but they're bringing a lot of pressure from a sales perspective and the fact that their expansion methods (other than clustering) are still not released worries me from a long term perspective. I also can't shake the idea that they're small enough to end up getting bought out and we've already had that happen once with Lefthand. That has the potential to screw over current customers pretty badly, especially if they need expansion later.
- EMC - They upgraded their device to handle our performance needs. They're listing the VNXe 3300 now, and it's up to 14 15k drives (with one extra for a hot spare) for our high speed disk plus 6 2 TB drives for bulk storage. The solution also leaves us with space in a second shelf to add an extra drive pack without any other additional expenses.
- Dell came in with a setup that isn't giving nearly as much headroom as I'd like. Very concerned about expense of expansion later if we hit a wall like we have with our Lefthand setup. I've been told to make whatever we buy last 5 years, so that's a major concern
- NetApp - Got their quote. They've basically priced themselves out of the competition. I don't have 45k to spend on this. Only way they can even be considered is if we dropped application consistent snapshots, which I'd prefer not to do.
I'm actually leaning towards EMC just a bit at this point. Any thoughts?
If you go with EMC be prepared for:
[*]Exorbitant support pricing outside of 3 years (in other words, if there is any chance it'll be more than 3 years in production get it up front, but it'll still be a lot more than the competitors).
[*]Aggressive sales when it's time to refresh this system with new disk. They will work tirelessly to dis-credit you in the eyes of management if they think you are not going to recommend a new EMC.
I am not saying that the EMC is not going to suite your purposes, it may very well be your best choice. Just watch your rear.