IBM System Storage DS8900F vs. StarWind SAN & NAS

It's a qualified 10. If it's a mainframe environment I wouldn't think twice. An open systems environment I would ask many questions to make sure that it's not going to be a bad decision. The open systems environments would need to have requirements to drive the DS8000. It would work for any environment in the interop matrix, but I'd just want to make sure that it's the right fit.

Incentivized

For companies wanting a lean 2 node HC cluster Starwind VSAN is the way to go. Performance, ease of setup, reliability, and management are very good. However, If companies have more than 2 node-setups Starwind isn't the best option as it only does mirrors. Having more than 2 nodes essentially means wasting 2/3 of storage capacity. If StarWind can add distributed raids in future releases that would be perfect

• Allows us to use GDPS for our disaster recovery solution. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our DR requirements.
• Allows us to have encryption of our data at rest. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our security requirements.
• Allows us to have a stable and reliable disk storage. This is a strength because it enables us to meet our data availability requirements.

Incentivized

• mirroring internal disks and flash between hypervisor servers.
• Creates powerful environment at low cost.
• Allows maintenance in zero down time.

Incentivized

• I have seen the GUI say that the storage facility is inaccessible, even when getting a clean health check from IBM. Typically rebooting the HMC fixes this.
• When decommissioning a box, you cannot delete arrays until ranks are done formatting. This adds a lot of time to the decomm process
• IO ports do not have a topology by default

Incentivized

• Documentation could be little better
• Have a distributed raid option

Other vendors lack many of the mainframe functions provided by DS8k. SInce IBM is the most prominent maninframe vendor support is unmatched.

Incentivized

Overall the combination is really doing great and helping the business to perform smoothly. The main reason behind selecting StarWind is, It's budget-friendly, has good support and it's great product functionalities.

Incentivized

• The DS8000 helps my customers meet their overall business objectives by providing a bulletproof platform for the most critical enterprise environments

Incentivized

• Even though we have had one host disk failure on one of the cluster nodes, there was no interruption to our users. The server was repaired and the StarWind SAN & NAS made the transition very simple.
• There has been zero downtime since the StarWind SAN & NAS was implemented.,

Incentivized