Thoughts on "enterprise" storage solution.

[Ray Van Dolson]

Hey all, this is probably slightly off-topic, but I figured it might be a good
place to start.

We're looking at replacing our "old" home directory storage solution.
Essentially it's a bunch of old Solaris boxes sharing their disks via NFS.
Users log on their various systems using NIS/LDAP and using automount are able
to access their home directories off this server.

Several solutions have been proposed... dedicated SAN's and such with a couple
front-ends.  All have fairly steep price tags and typically end up involving
Sun hardware.

I'm trying to come up with some alternate solutions, hopefully using RHEL on
Dell/other hardware.  Is RH's NFS performance/stability up their with Sun's?
I know in the past it's been recommended to go with a BSD for solid Intel NFS
performance.

What type of solutions do some of you use out there for this type of shared
disk or home directory providing services?  Any specific lists where this type
of thing might be discussed and/or be on-topic?  Using GFS with something like
a PowerVault or EMC looks interesting... 

Thanks!
Ray