We use the IBM Enterprise Storage Server for storage against Oracle, Lawson, and various internal applications. The ESS is connected with NT, NetWare, and AIX. Our support engineer was extremely helpful especially with our fiber connections to NT and Netware servers. We use two Brocade 3800 switches (we actually have the IBM branded version)to connect these servers to the ESS. Netware and AIX integrate beautifully and Windows NT shows all four paths of each connection (Windows 2000 only shows the one).
     Overall, the ESS has been an indispensable tool for creating a reliable and fast switched fabric storage solution. We tested the read and write times with our ESS over fiber against direct attached storage and the ESS beat it by a factor of three!
     The StorWatch web based client is extremely useful for allocating space to multiple servers and a snap to use.I'd only recommend using the NT version though. You can control several AIX, Netware, and NT boxes from one NT workstation, and the AIX client comes with an install script that will make you pull your hair out. It asks you for an install directory, but then ignores your request and attempts to install in the rootvg. It also requires filesets that we didn't have installed and didn't plan on installing. Further, it references some of the directories that it created incorrectly, e.g. .../en_us instead of .../EN_US. The IBM applications support analyst didn't have a clue about AIX, so he wasn't much help.
     Overall, I do recommend the ESS, just make sure that you use and abuse the sales engineer and system integrator. This whole gig costs a lot, and you need to get what you pay for.
     The reliability section of the review details rates Excellent, but "turn it on and walk away" is certainly not accurate for the ESS. There's a lot of work that goes into your configuration, namely your plan for migrating existing data to the ESS. However, after that occurs, the ESS is unmatched for reliability. The ESS uses two RS/6000 based controller systems that don't do anything but manage the ESS, but do it extremely well.

Recommended: Yes