Hi,

We're in the preliminary scoping phase for a low/mid-range iSCSI SAN solution. I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative real-world experiences with -

NetApp 270c
HDS AMS200
EMC CX320

At the moment the NetApp is the most familiar to me as I have used one of their NAS boxes before and the simulator provides a pretty good indication of how it works. However the iSCSI seems a bit of a 'bolt-on' and its not clear if it will handle tiered storage as well as the other vendors (then again does it matter?).

The HDS & EMC are unknown quantities (other than what I can glean from the web).

Any feedback concerning ease of use, expansion, licensing, snapshot mechanism (the EMC seems clunky from their literature but I don't know if that's the case in operation).

Also does anyone have any iSCSI 'gotchas' ? Is a TOE one of those 'nice to have but not really necessary' things on a modern server or should it be factored into the solution ?

Cheers,
Raj.