Hi Scott,
Donald mentioned SM and referenced generic ZFS (could be Oracle, OpenIndiana, FreeBSD, etc.) solutions which have uncoordinated HW, SW and support. Nexenta is packaged to compete with EMC, NetApp, etc. as primary storage in the Commercial market.
If you would like to get an overview, please feel free to ping me.
Best.

There is a software defined (ZFS) solution- Nexenta- that is specifically organized for Enterprise use and that includes comprehensive hardware and software support. Using Super Micro Reference Architecture, a single head node (HA optional), 200GB L2Arc & Zil dedicated cache, RAID Z2, a 3 yr NBD on-site HW warranty, 3 yr. x 7x24 SW support would run under your $15K budget.

Nexenta includes:
• Certified for Virtual / VDI/Cluster/Big Data/Cloud/Archive & Data Protection Environments
• Standard functionality includes Hybrid storage pools (HDD, SSD, Flash), Auto-tiering, in-line Compression/De-duplication, Replication, unlimited Snapshots, only 2 plug-in options if required: High Availability and FC support
• Uses Scalable Read & Write Cache to accelerate Read/Write performance, leveraging low cost spinning disk but also allowing using 10K/15K/SSD pools to achieve demanding IOPs and throughput
• Unmatched Data Integrity- continuous integrity checking, built-in self healing, 256b check sum copy-on-write, seamlessly addresses intermittent faulty devices, single/dual/triple parity RAID or RAID 10
• Perpetual licensing w/incremental capacity expansion. No replacement of core equipment, minimizing TCO and cost of growth at a fraction of dedicated hardware solutions.

International Computer Concepts (www.ICC-USA.com) has been building high performance/ high density compute & storage for commercial, government, research and education and is a premier integrator of NexentaStor. For more info, I can be reached at
Brian Hershenhouse, [email protected] or 877 422-8729 x109.