Where Stonefly excelled in our testing was in the performance it got out of their SATA array. Although Nexsan, another SATA-based vendor, was faster in most of our tests, Stonefly came in first or second in every performance metric when compared to other SATA devices.
Stonefly Storage Concentrator with DNF FS16F Array
Score: 3.9 out of 5
Editor’s note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across iSCSI SAN Server categories; please see our full coverage.
Stonefly, a wholly owned subsidiary of DNF (Dynamic Network Factory), teamed its own iSCSI controller with a DNF RAID array with 16 SATA drives for this test. The Stonefly controller is a 1U appliance, based on a Supermicro chassis. The 3U DNF FS16F can hold either SATA or SAS disk drives.
Stonefly has not integrated the DNF RAID array management into its own management, though, which caused us some problems on initial installation. With no documentation on the DNF RAID array, we had to have Stonefly technical support log in to the DNF array and prepare it for use with the Stonefly controller.
First impressions of the Stonefly product are that it’s easy to get the iSCSI part to work. What worried us more than configuration of the iSCSI disk service was the un-integrated management of the attached storage system, along with the lack of redundant connections between the Stonefly controller and the DNF RAID array. Although we didn’t get two controllers, Stonefly does support a topology with two controllers acting as a high-availability pair, with load balancing at the virtual disk level. However, we would have wanted to see redundant connections to the DNF RAID array even with a single controller to help guard against cable failure.
The easy iSCSI management tools extend up to enterprise features such as snapshots and replication. While some parts of the snapshot GUI were designed by a sadist (for example, you can’t actually see your scheduled snapshots all in one place), once we got going with the Stonefly we found that it was pretty self-explanatory.
Where Stonefly excelled in our testing was in the performance it got out of its SATA array. Although Nexsan, another SATA-based vendor, was faster in most of our tests, Stonefly came in first or second in every performance metric when compared with other SATA devices.
