I've got some budget funds to spend, and would really like to upgrade in terms of storage. Today I'm using 3 HP servers with 12 virtual Machines stored in local raid arrays, and backup to a QNAP NAS with gigabit copper connection. It's okay in terms of speed, but I'd like to go beyond okay. I've been looking at building an iSCSI environment to speed up the virtual machine datastore(s), and get a faster backup unit as well. The QNAP performs at about 20MB/s and I'd really like to at least triple that speed.
So first of all a new storage solution and second a better backup solution.
If you had about $5-6000, what would you spend it on? I'd really like to hear!