Evesham StoreVault S500

Next up was iSCSI, and we created two LUNs on the S500 and assigned one to each server. These had their initiators logged on to different Ethernet ports, allowing us to provide a dedicated link to each server. For a single server, Iometer reported 80MB/sec read speeds - not bad, but the S500 won't be worrying dedicated iSCSI boxes such as Axstor's Ai-Lite (web ID: 113213). Performance didn't drop much further with two servers running Iometer, as we saw a cumulative speed of 146MB/sec. We ran these figures past StoreVault and it expressed little surprise, saying the overheads of the S500 were responsible for the slower iSCSI performance. Things looked brighter for FC performance, as one server reported a top speed of 185MB/sec - not far off 2Gb/sec FC wire speed. With two FC connections in action, the servers returned a cumulative 280MB/sec.

The StoreVault S500 offers SMBs a complete network storage solution that can be easily expanded with demand. IP SAN performance isn't great and the management interface can be sluggish, but you won't find many other products delivering this level of storage-related features at this price.

Author: Dave Mitchell