Dell PowerVault MD3000i

Performance is a winner, but the appliance has a finite expansion potential, as only two MD1000 cabinets are supported. Replication and thin provisioning aren't on the cards, either,but Dell has these covered as, at the time of review, it announced it was in the process of acquiring EqualLogic. We looked at its PS300E appliance (web ID: 83705) a while ago and were impressed with the level of features but not its price tag. Essentially, the EqualLogic systems will give Dell an enterprise-level iSCSI solution, allowing it to cover the full business spectrum with these and the MD3000i. Dell also advised us that it expects the MD3000i to support VMware ESX Server 3.5 by December, so storage virtualisation should be on the menu by the time you read this.

For its price, the PowerVault MD3000i offers a reasonable range of features teamed with good performance and plenty of redundancy. This makes it appealing to SMBs as a simple solution for consolidating network storage that's far more cost-effective than much of the competition.

Author: Dave Mitchell