How much does managed SAN storage cost?

[Mark R]

Our primary data store at work is getting full, unfortunately the entire solution is managed by the government stipulated supplier (one of the probs of working, albeit indirectly, for the govt).

We recently enquired as to how much it would cost to upgrade the existing storage. Currently, it's 10 TB of online RAID, mirrored on the 2 campuses in 2 different towns, with an automated tape library backup system on one site.

The quote we received for an 8 TB upgrade - bringing it up to 18 TB - was $350k.

This strikes me as a little excessive, considering that the private fiber is already leased, and that there is already a SAN on each campus and an existing tape library.

I don't really know much about enterprise server kit - presumably, it's all fiber channel stuff which has eye-watering prices - but compared to even standard RAID systems, the price seems out of proportion. e.g. a 8 TB NAS with RAID 6 + hot spare, could be had for $5k. OK, the NAS might not have the performance, but still - 70x the cost?

 

[bigshooter]

What kind of disk array are you adding storage to, what raid type, and what kind of disk are you using? Mid tier fc array could be $35-$40k per enclosure (depending on drive type may be closer to $25k) with costs going up if you are using raid 10 and FC drives versus raid 5 and 1TB SATA. If you went with two trays of 300GB 15k drives setup in 4x7disk raid 5 (per site) you're probably at $120-$150,000 plus installation services, plus per TB replication licensing costs for most array or off array replication systems. $350k does sound pretty high though, but who knows. If you're an IBM shop dealing with a business partner those asshats tend to really stick it to you.

Did they have to expand the tape library to handle an extra 8TB of data, or does your backup software have any components that require capacity based licensing?

 

[kevman]

When you mention datastore, are you using this for VM Ware ?