New Primary File Storage Device Inquiry - What Would You Do?

[jpascone]

I am looking to replace my primary storage server for the small company I work for but am unclear what device/OS to go with? Used to be you just built a new file server and added a ton of storage and this became your primary file server, these days so many storage options. At home I am running a QNAP and love that. We are a Windows shop so maybe Storage Server? If so what hardware?
Thanks very much..

 

[cajuntank]

You should start to see some Windows 2012 Storage Server offerings from the various regular players since Microsoft is still just doing that one OEM (as best as I can tell). So HP (I'm partial to HP myself when it comes to server and storage equipment), Dell, IBM, etc... should all be coming out with their new equipment based on that OS pretty soon. You can get one now based one 2008 R2, but I would hold off till the 2012 if it were me due to the newer ReFS that improved on NTFS. There are NTFS features that ReFS does not support like disk quotas, EFS for file level encryption, and file compression to name a few. So get with your preferred reseller to get you the best fit for your organizations needs.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-storage-server/default.aspx