Nexsan SATABeast review

There is still no easy setup routine for adding into a SAN. Nexsan is a Microsoft partner but does not seem to ship the EasySAN configuration software. This makes it a little bit of a pain to configure properly but then this is not a device for the faint of heart or inexperienced.

The ability to allocate arrays to individual controllers and create a proper load-balanced array is impressive. The performance of the drives was also impressive. This leads us to the counter loading of the drives to reduce the vibration problem. With so many drives in an enclosure it is possible to get a drastic increase in the vibration. This will absolutely destroy performance and substantially increase the wear and tear on the drives themselves.

To see how well Nexsan had dealt with this we used the 'glass of water' test. This requires an almost full glass of water being placed on a piece of blotting paper on top of the drive enclosure. Using a pipette, the glass is then topped up until the water is clinging to the very top of the glass. They you set off a series of high intensity reads and writes. Any spillage is due to the vibration and you can see it in the water by just dropping in a little bit of coloured ink.

The Nexsan SATABeast created some small ripples on the top of the water and just broke the suspension holding the water onto the top of the glass. While a couple of drops ran down the outside and there was some swirling of the ink in the glass, this was it. It might not be whisper quiet but it was completely stable and it would be fair to say that I've tested servers that have created more turbulence in the glass.

This is a truly impressive storage array and with a street price of under £1/TB for enterprise level storage, is worth the investment. With a street price current around 20 per cent lower than the MSRP, this is a clear bargain. With Nexsan claiming to ship over 4PB per month of data storage and a waiting list to get a SATABeast, it's not hard to see why. The small annoyances of the drive and case fitting as well as the software to add to an iSCSI SAN are just that, small.