For people considering EqualLogic, the most useful thing I could tell them was that they should implement a demo using a piece of equipment in a proof-of-concept environment and have the vendor help with that. It is the most ideal way to test the product. On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate the EqualLogic PS Series overall as definitely a nine-out-of-ten. I would give it that rating because it does what it says it is supposed to do. It has been extremely reliable and very easy to upgrade and expand. In the past when Dell announced they were going to pull the line, all the customers called up and objected. They actually wanted to buy more boxes. Because of the response from the customers, Dell postponed the end-of-life of the product a few times. A lot of people use the product and it is a workhorse. Reliability is key, especially in my particular usage for them. The performance is there, and they probably are over-specced. By that I mean the capacity of the product exceeds what we need it to do. As to reliability, having just four drives failing in the span of six or seven years is phenomenal. It is closer to being unheard of. If they were to fix a few of those minor issues that could possibly bring my rating of the product up closer to a 10, but I do not want to give somebody a ten because they just can not possibly do everything right. If you give them that impression they will just stop improving it.
