OpenFiler

[speedy3k]

I have been using openfiler for sometime. I've been using it primarly as a nfs datastore for vmware.

I did some basic benchmarks against a netapp storevault, and the Openfiler outperformed it on speed.
cifs and Active Directory work well
Nic teaming seems to work well if configured correctly.
jumbo frames is supported.
updates are frequent and easy to apply

snapshots work ok, but degrades performance. I havent' been able to find a good way to revert back to a snapshot
HA/Clustering can be difficult to setup

I haven't had a need for anything other than a NFS datastore, so I haven't pushed its limits yet..but for what I use it for, it works very very well.

[uxbod]

Thanks for that ... What I shall be looking for is iSCSI stability so the question is whether I go OpenFiler or Open-E. I am not adverse to paying money for a product so Open-E may be a option.

[speedy3k]

if your looking at using this for a datastore for vmware or xen, you may want to look at nfs vs iscsi. iscsi will give you slightly higher performance under a lighter load, but nfs performs better under high loads. nfs also gives you more flexablity than iscsi.

[d2globalinc]

We have been using OpenFiler for serveral years now. We currently have two OpenFiler SANs providing datastores to 13 frontend ESXi 3.5 for VM's. It's performance is great! We actually started with it to use iSCSI, but in the past 6 months we have reconfigured the SAN's and now use NFS only. We also have Zimbra dedicated on one of the frontend servers, but its datastore is also on one of the SAN's. Works great! The SAN outperforms any of the local disks in the frontend servers easily.

Shane Menshik
D2 GLOBAL INC