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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."

11 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?

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    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.

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      Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
  2. Re:Overpriced by crow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Right. And the reason virtualization leads to increased use of SAN storage is that when you virtualize a bunch of logical servers onto a small number of physical servers, it suddenly becomes much more practical to use higher-end storage, as you don't have to have separate expensive HBAs, switches, and whatnot to connect to your fancy storage systems.

  3. 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.

  4. Cool! by spazimodo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've been talking to Equallogic guys at various VMWare events and I think they've got a great product. The biggest pain with implementing ESX has been the cost around shared SAN storage (yes you can use NAS now but come on.)

    I love VMWare, but can't stand their parent corp (EMC) and can't wait for the Compaqification of the SAN market with the part of IBM played by EMC. Any company that forces their customers to buy $100 SATA drives for $900 deserves to die at the hands of commoditization.

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    1. Re:Cool! by ocbwilg · · Score: 2, Informative

      I love VMWare, but can't stand their parent corp (EMC) and can't wait for the Compaqification of the SAN market with the part of IBM played by EMC. Any company that forces their customers to buy $100 SATA drives for $900 deserves to die at the hands of commoditization.

      If you think that EqualLogic's biggest advantage over EMC was in the hardware prices, you're only getting half the story. The FAR more interesting thing to me was that when you bought the iSCSI array it came with all of the software for snaps, replication, etc included in the purchase price, and it's as easy to install as a server. With EMC, you buy a similar capacity SAN for 1.5x-2x the price and then after that they hit you with $1800 in professional services for installation, then charge you $3000-$5000 for each additional piece of software functionality that you need.

  5. Interesting buy for Dell by warpedma · · Score: 3, Informative

    The whole EMC thing makes me wonder the reason for the purchase. That having been said, we've been using EqualLogic for 2 1/2 years, and at the price point, it's pretty much unbeatable. It's ridiculously easy to configure and grow. We've a small staff with a huge amount of storage (35 TB) due to the image intensive nature of our work (digital imaging). EqualLogic has been a life save for us from both time and performance standpoints. We could not have gotten purchase approval for anything faster.

  6. Re:More on Forbes by jeks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ouch.. I think my joke went flying straight over your head.

  7. 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

  8. Re:Overpriced by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Is it for backups of corporate data centers?"

    You see it used everywhare. What do you keep user data? A round here every PC has a network drive on it's desktop and that is where peole keep all their files. So when I log into another PC in the plant I get my files on the desktop. That "drive" is really a big disk array. How do they back it up? The company owns three geographically dispersed arrays and they keep them synchronized using high speed data lines. They also use tape.

    Basically you would use a storage array any time you own more than a handfull of computers. If just makes sense to get the data off the desktop so it can (1) Be properly secured and backup up and (2) follow the user's login. This is such a good idea that storage companies are doing well.

    It is over priced because it is a growing marget and everyone wants to buy in now before it gets even bigger