Craig, I took a look at the Dulce box you're referring to, and we work regularly with another array that seems to be very similar. If I'm right, what the Dulce is doing is allowing you to present all storage to all fibre ports. This would allow you connect two edit stations, one to each fibre port, and have them each see everything. The SAN software they are probably referring to is something along the lines of FibreJet...
http://www.commandsoft.com/software_fibrejet.jsp
or SanMP....
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com/products/product_detail.php?pi=8
You would not be able to use Xsan with this as it requires a fibre switch (and a number of other things). To set your SAN up, you'd start by creating several partitions on your array, one for each volume you'd like to create. A typical partition set could go something like:
Edit1-Scratch
Edit2-Scratch
Graphics
Audio
if you wanted, you could also add partitions for your projects (which could be re-labeled as needed):
ProjectName1
ProjectName2
ProjectName3...
Finally, you'd need one small partition for the SAN database that keeps everything organized. It's usually the first partition and is about 1GB. These partitions (except for the database partition) would then appear as your available volumes on each edit station.
Both SanMP and Fibrejet will let you share storage without the switch and metadata controllers of an Xsan, with the main caveats being they are not as scalable, or configurable, and do not offer concurrent write access to all users on all volumes, i.e. one edit station is allowed to write to a given volume at a time. If your other edit station needs write access to that volume, the first station must relinquish access to it by re-mounting it as read-only.
With that said, fibre channel is a great technology, but much of it's power comes from the fibre switch itself. When you remove that, you remove all of the options and configuration possibilities that it brings.
For comparison, some companies that offer SAN-in-a-box solutions are Facilis...
http://www.facilis2.com/
and Archion...
http://www.archion.com/prod-main-san.php
We have had a great experience with Facilis, and it is often our go-to solution if a client needs a solid solution that's not as complex or expensive as an Xsan. Archion offers a similar product, but I have not yet had the opportunity to install one. They are both turn-key solutions, but have similar limitations, and are quite a bit more expensive than a single array shared out with SanMP or FibreJet.
JM
