Hitachi Simple Modular Storage 100 Review
I hate it. I didn’t buy it, someone else did and I got stuck “using” it, then selling it.
It came preconfigured with a bunch of 300GB SAS 15K RPM drives in it for use with iSCSI. To me that makes no sense. What’s the point of the HUGELY fast drives in something that at MOST will be reading/writing at 400MB/s? Worthless design.
So I decided to change out the SAS drives for some (much) larger SATA ones, but figured I’d insert them when/if I order them. I remove the disks that came in it (which oddly had threadlock on every screw) then boot it, only to find it no longer knows its serial number.
It seems the system configuration is stored on the disks. The system cannot be upgraded. So, if it doesn’t support a huge amount of storage and it can’t possibly use the speed of the array inside, what’s the point of owning it? As I understand they go for around $7-10K configured this way.
A SAN that’s expandable and usable for WAY more storage is probably not too far out of that price range. If you bought one of these, you’ll be mad at yourself for it. If you’re going to buy one of these after reading this, I’ll be mad at you.