The claims of storage vendors vary widely, and this is certainly the case among iSCSI vendors, where architectures and capabilities can be very different. Dell has long claimed that the EqualLogic storage family leverages tried and true internal capabilities to deliver distinctly better ease of use and performance without requiring convoluted or time-consuming configuration efforts. And, they claim, they’ve integrated these proven capabilities into a comprehensive storage infrastructure—based on their elastic pool technology—that also delivers more scalability than their competitors. With these claims in mind, Taneja Group set out to examine Dell’s differentiation in the midst of a crowded and rapidly growing field. To do this, we performed hands-on validation of a Dell EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN array against a leading competitive iSCSI array and a second leading Fibre Channel array.

In our 2005 report on WAN optimization, we examined Riverbed’s unique and pioneering technology. Five years later, in the largest datacenters and most complex networks, Riverbed accelerates the greatest number of applications and protocols with the broadest range of optimization appliances and software in the industry. In this updated report, we take a fresh look at the role WAN optimization plays in today’s highly distributed datacenters and cloud computing architectures. Massive consolidation and data mobility, enabled by virtualization, have radically altered how we build servers, design applications, and deploy storage for the emerging “cloud” decade, when IT performance will be constrained, more than ever, by network performance.