NEXSAN ATABOY vs Promise Ulta
 

I'm in the market for about 2TB of direct attached storage. The
storage will be used for back-up only. The plan is to back-up to
disk, then to tape.

I am not interested in enterprise class solutions and the data is not
mission critical. I am looking at 2 products:

Nexsan ATA Boy

Promise UltraTrak series

Does anyone have any experience with either of these? The nexsan is
more expensive, but comes with a 3 yr warranty (drives also get 3 year
warranty). The Promise product has 1 year warranty and requires you
to buy the hard drives seperately. I also know that the Nexsan is
faster than the UltraTrak, but speed is not a factor.....I have
bottlenecks in the back-up proccess that make the speed difference a
moot point (data will be streaming over a t1).

I like the Nexsan, but it is about 2,000 more expensive. Are there
any other differences that I can use to justify the purchase of the
ATA Boy?

TIA
Ron

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:25:22 -0800, ron wrote:

Hey There!

Nexsan ATA Boy

Promise UltraTrak series

Does anyone have any experience with either of these? The nexsan is
more expensive, but comes with a 3 yr warranty (drives also get 3 year
warranty). The Promise product has 1 year warranty and requires you
to buy the hard drives seperately. I also know that the Nexsan is
faster than the UltraTrak, but speed is not a factor.....I have
bottlenecks in the back-up proccess that make the speed difference a
moot point (data will be streaming over a t1).

Yes indeed here is a mail i wrote to another guy in a newsgroup that
was planning to buy one of those *******s :


Hep

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:57:33AM +1300, Jones, Steven wrote:

u can get hot swap ide

promise do one (hot swap ide), dunno how good it is mind.

If you are thinking on this one -
http://www.promise.com/product/produ...=90&familyId=6

Dont buy it! It as simple as that. 1 year ago i bought one of those
*******s from promise and its slooow. Im running it as filer on a
debian 3.0 system filesystem xfs and i havent been able to push it to
a sustain throughput on more than 15 MB/sec. This is with 8 60GB IBM
deskstar 7200rpm disks in raid5. Recently a disk crashed on me and the
hole array went offline allthough the manual says it should continue to
function. NOT TRUE! I relplace the broken drive with a new and the
promisearray began to rebuild i thought i where homesafe..... After
rebuilding in 15 hours the array went offline again and nothing i did got
it back?? I called localshop where i bought it nobody could help me they
suggested that i contacted promise in netherlands. Story continues.....

Promise in netherlands where quit helpfull but what they suggested got
me pulling out my hair!!! (what i have left of it). They suggested
that i deletede the array, created a new and saved it then just after
saving it i had to pull out the powercord in the back so the array
wouldn't initialize. I would not belive what i was hearing. Pulling
out powercord while the array is initializing sounds like a hugh hack
to me but i did it just because i didnt knew what else to do. It
actually worked so now im back to the good old sloooow promisearray
and after a xfs_repair my filer was up and running again.

Next time i have to buy ideraid ill try 3ware for sure.

I need to clearify that ive only worked with the old version of the
promise ultratrak series when it was called TX8 now they have changed
the version name to SX8000 but as fare as i can tell its the same box?
Anyways after the above described experince nothing will get me to buy
another promise product thats for sure. Be wise spend the extra 2000
:)

Sincerly Thomas Kirk

No experience with the Promise UltraTrak. But we now have 10 NexSan ATABoy
installed at various locations and recently placed an order for their
ATABeast unit. They are great so far. They are easy to configure and setup.
Has fairly good monitoring/alerting system that keeps you informed about its
status. So far we have been loving it. Perfect candidates for
disk-to-disk-to-tape application. Worth your money spent.
-G

"Mr X" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:25:22 -0800, ron wrote:

Hey There!

Nexsan ATA Boy

Promise UltraTrak series

Does anyone have any experience with either of these? The nexsan is
more expensive, but comes with a 3 yr warranty (drives also get 3 year
warranty). The Promise product has 1 year warranty and requires you
to buy the hard drives seperately. I also know that the Nexsan is
faster than the UltraTrak, but speed is not a factor.....I have
bottlenecks in the back-up proccess that make the speed difference a
moot point (data will be streaming over a t1).

Yes indeed here is a mail i wrote to another guy in a newsgroup that
was planning to buy one of those *******s :


Hep

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:57:33AM +1300, Jones, Steven wrote:

u can get hot swap ide

promise do one (hot swap ide), dunno how good it is mind.

If you are thinking on this one -

http://www.promise.com/product/produ...=90&familyId=6

Dont buy it! It as simple as that. 1 year ago i bought one of those
*******s from promise and its slooow. Im running it as filer on a
debian 3.0 system filesystem xfs and i havent been able to push it to
a sustain throughput on more than 15 MB/sec. This is with 8 60GB IBM
deskstar 7200rpm disks in raid5. Recently a disk crashed on me and the
hole array went offline allthough the manual says it should continue to
function. NOT TRUE! I relplace the broken drive with a new and the
promisearray began to rebuild i thought i where homesafe..... After
rebuilding in 15 hours the array went offline again and nothing i did got
it back?? I called localshop where i bought it nobody could help me they
suggested that i contacted promise in netherlands. Story continues.....

Promise in netherlands where quit helpfull but what they suggested got
me pulling out my hair!!! (what i have left of it). They suggested
that i deletede the array, created a new and saved it then just after
saving it i had to pull out the powercord in the back so the array
wouldn't initialize. I would not belive what i was hearing. Pulling
out powercord while the array is initializing sounds like a hugh hack
to me but i did it just because i didnt knew what else to do. It
actually worked so now im back to the good old sloooow promisearray
and after a xfs_repair my filer was up and running again.

Next time i have to buy ideraid ill try 3ware for sure.

I need to clearify that ive only worked with the old version of the
promise ultratrak series when it was called TX8 now they have changed
the version name to SX8000 but as fare as i can tell its the same box?
Anyways after the above described experince nothing will get me to buy
another promise product thats for sure. Be wise spend the extra 2000
:)

Sincerly Thomas Kirk