Our SAN is expensive. Easily 10x the cost of the raw storage.
VMware is expensive. Backup software, management software, Exchange, our wireless network solution, our MDM solution, that's all expensive.
RHEL isn't free either.
I just started a pilot program with the iXsystems TrueNAS, which is the supported enterprise version of FreeNAS.
It was easily a 10th the price of everyone else I looked at. Plus the support contact was inexpensive.
Now if I could just figure out something about our VMware licensing. I've looked at RHEV, but we have a lot of automation built around VMware. It will be very expensive to switch.
The few times I have been peripherally involved with acquiring on-site enterprise SAN storage the prices have been out of this world but not every dependent on what the OS accessing the thing is