STORAGE ARRAYS
Capacity
* What is the maximum capacity for your storage system? • For a single storage shelf? • At full capacity?
RAID
* What levels of RAID do you support?
RAID 0 RAID 5 Dual-parity RAID
RAID 10 RAID 1
* Does your array have the ability to change RAID levels non-destructively?
Data protection
* Do you offer redundant disk controllers?
* Does your storage array offer multipathing support?
* Do you offer redundant power supplies?
* Does your array have asynchronous or synchronous replication capabilities?
Connectivity
* How do you connect to servers?
iSCSI Fibre Channel NAS (CIFS/NFS)
Both iSCSI and Fibre Channel
* What hard drive types do you support?
Fibre Channel SCSI SATA
* If your array supports multiple drive types, can different drives be mixed and matched?
Power
* What are your power requirements?
Platform support
* What platforms does your array support? (That is, Windows Server 2003, Solaris 10 and so on. For Linux, please state which distributions are supported.)
Management
* Does your array support SMI-S management tools? While iSCSI systems cannot be managed by SMI-S yet—the standard is still being worked on—SMI-S is becoming a checklist item on many storage RFPs. SMI-S compliance provides managers the ability to manage all arrays using an SMI-S-compliant SAN management package.
A longer version of this RFP is online at eWEEKlabs.com/Labs/links.
With this sample RFP, eWEEK Labs focuses on midrange external storage arrays that connect to servers using either Fibre Channel or iSCSI.
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