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Dell Buys IPO-Bound EqualLogic for $1.4 Billion

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the money-flying-making-a-new-bubble dept.

alphadogg writes "Dell is stretching further behind PCs and servers and boosting its storage business with a $1.4 billion buyout of EqualLogic, a storage company that filed to go public in August. CEO Michael Dell had hinted just last week that Dell could be on the prowl for some big game."

5 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Implications for EMC? by crow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if this has any implications for Dell's partnership with EMC. Will Dell not be pushing EMC's low-end iSCSI storage now that they have their own? Or do the offerings from this new acquisition not compete at the same level as the EMC products?

    Disclaimer: I work at EMC, but have no inside knowledge concerning Dell or this acquisition.

    1. Re:Implications for EMC? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think almost nobody takes EMC**2's low-end iSCSI storage very seriously. I think most people using EMC**2 hardware are doing so because EMC**2 has a reputation as a high-end player. Their low-end iSCSI implementation is a LOT more expensive than other offerings from smaller, more nimble companies like EqualLogic. If I'm shooting for the low-end hardware, I might as well get the best price I can, no?

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Implications for EMC? by TopSpin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wonder if this has any implications for Dell's partnership with EMC. Dell just released the MD3000i which sort of obviates the AX-150. Buying EqualLogic doesn't give Dell a FC platform to obviate the EMC CX gear they're reselling. Perhaps they'll put FC phys on the PS boxes...

      I've always thought of EqualLogic as the NetApp of iSCSI; excellent design and performance but very expensive. Last I heard they had just over 3000 customers. Buying EqualLogic gives Dell the iSCSI SAN assets to compete with EMC/NetApp/IBM enterprise iSCSI.

      HP should'a bought 'em. Perhaps they'll snap up LeftHand instead.

      --
      Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
  2. What will be left in two years? by The+Second+Horseman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    EqualLogic was kind of a cool company that bundled value and decent software engineering into a good package, and had good support for stuff besides just Windows and Linux (VMware, NetWare, etc). Good service, etc. There are probably more than a few EqualLogic customers that are less than thrilled about this.

  3. Re:1 word: by Thundersnatch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I implemented Openfiler, but the poor clustering options (active/passive only) made it a non-starter for anything remotely ctriical in my organization. A SAN simply has to be available, with no interruptions (even a few seconds of failover time breaks many database applications). With Openfiler, clusters essentially have to be local, active/passive, and failover isn't exactly seamless.

    iSCSI Gear like EqualLogic and LeftHand go way beyond this... new devices simply join the cluster, and data is restriped dynamically ammongst all nodes according to the replication policies for each volume. You can also have multi-site clusters with appropriate bandwidth settings, remote scheduled snapshots, MPIO, etc. Blow a module and things keep working without any interruption at all.

    We're using openfiler for archival and backup storage now, but I don't see anything in the project roadmap to make me think it will compete with commercial iSCSI SAN and NAS solutions anytime soon. Maybe they can get something working with OCFS2