Organizations of all sizes are struggling to meet the conflicting challenges associated with macro-level global financial uncertainty and micro-level information storage growth and complexity. A growing number of IT managers are turning to virtualization and consolidation technologies to meet these challenges. With a focus on scalability, automated management using rich software tools, all-inclusive pricing, and an architecture that leverages the economic advantages of Ethernet and industry standard technologies, Dell's EqualLogic storage family is an excellent example of a solution that was purpose-built to address these issues.

This ESG Lab report examines the economic excellence of highly scalable EqualLogic iSCSI storage solutions compared to traditional direct attached storage (DAS), Fibre Channel storage area network (FC SAN), and multi-protocol solutions (defined as systems that provide FC, iSCSI, and NAS connectivity). After testing EqualLogic storage in the lab using an infrastructure encompassing seven generations of EqualLogic hardware, ESG Lab calculated the total cost of ownership (TCO) over five years for an organization requiring 80 raw terabytes of storage capacity using systems available for purchase today.