Aberdeen makes a good box and stands by their product.  I had purchased
one of their machines while working at the UofM College of Biological
Sciences to be our Amanda backup server.  Worked great!  They didn't
blink an eye when I said I would prefer not to pay for or load a
commercial Linux on the box and use Debian instead.  Something you'll
get from Aberdeen that you won't get from an HP or Dell is an
understanding with the Linux community.  Sure, the big boys are trying
to cater to our needs, but they still need the nursing bottle of
commercial Linux companies to ween them into the market.  I find this a
bit sad given the success of Linux today.  Aberdeen, at least the one I
dealt with a few years ago, was responsive and catered to my needs as a
customer.

Regarding the NAS product, I'm relatively unfamiliar with it.  I'm
betting it's simply a pared down Linux running on a flash card.  I would
be interested in trying it out as a cheap disk alternative to the big
boys (EMC, NetApp, etc.)

Oh, I did get a chance to test the Coraid box with Solaris 10.  The
command-line utilities seemed to be pretty straight forward and easy to
use.  I didn't manage to eek out enough time to thoroughly test the
system, and I had some misunderstanding on exactly how to turn things
up, but I believe I know what I had done wrong.  I would have liked to
give you folks real numbers on the performance of AoE, alas, I didn't
have the time for it.

I do think systems like the Aberdeen Linux NAS and the Coraid disk array
have earned a place in our bag-o-tricks.  Weigh your cost to risk ratio
and determine what is acceptable for you in your specific environment.
If you're looking for no or little risk, then your cost will certainly
go up.

If you folks have checked out the Xiotech Emprise series of disk
storage, do so.  Very highly reliable disk (5yr no cost HW replacement)
and high performance disk.  They claim lowest cost per MB/sec rather
than lowest cost per MB.  (I was quoted a little over $40k for about
13TB usable storage).

This is a relatively young company when compared to the HP's and IBM's,
once wholely owned by Seagate.  Seagate sold most of its interest in the
company, but also sold them the technology they're using in the Emprise
series.  It's pretty exciting stuff if you're seriously interested in
data center reliability.  Should the company be counted out because it's
a relative newcommer?  More to the point, should I be basing my
purchasing decisions on my impression of the company's future?  There's
no real clear cut answer.  You do the research, compare the risks,
compare the costs, and make a decision.

Personally, I like the fact that Aberdeen has been in the business for
17 years, and that Xiotech has been around since 1998.  It means they've
done something right in the past.  I cannot predict their future
success, but they seem to be doing well enough today and have provided
viable products.

Good luck.  My personal advice on Aberdeen?  Give them a chance.  They
give you a 30 day money-back guarantee for a custom built solution for
you.  That's pretty confident, if you ask me.  Plus, they give you a
five year warranty?  17 years in business?  Go for it.  Test them out
and let us know how they fared.

Chad