Re: when to nas or san
- From: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Andy)
- Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 01:15:00 GMT
In article <l5s1i19ce1cdvdbidplta8h541pro86u6a@xxxxxxx>, mr_castalot@xxxxxxxxx
says...
>
>On Thu, 08 Sep 2005 17:21:03 GMT, info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Andy)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <dqfvh1df5bv1hga6i62qmvh4ed5bomppd0@xxxxxxx>,
mr_castalot@xxxxxxxxx
>>says...
>>>
>>>On Wed, 7 Sep 2005 08:53:05 +0100, m0rk <no@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>>In article <0jpsh15cmj6heaspbj1dsbjmnqt0r64p35@xxxxxxx>,
>>>>mr_castalot@xxxxxxxxx says...
>>>>> On Wed, 7 Sep 2005 00:40:51 +0100, m0rk <no@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> >We have a wan of w2k servers, several locations, all varying degrees of
>>>>> >storage on HP servers ... the main HQ currently have a 1TB array of
>>>>> >disks that has about 100gb free currently ...
>>>>> >
>>>>> >They are looking at a SAN solution to give them somewhere between 10-
>>>>> >16TB for the next few years ...
>>>>> >
>>>>> >Anyone have any good pointers to documents on when to use Nas or a San
>>>>> >solution or the merits, problems differences, etc ... ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Wow, that's an extremely open ended question that will elicit such
>>>>> responses as:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) depends on the application
>>>>> 2) nas for file access, san for block access
>>>>> 3) nas can do it all
>>>>> 4) san can do it all
>>>>> 5) databases must use san's
>>>>> 6) real databases should use nas
>>>>> 7) good god man, give us some more info than just capacity
>>>>>
>>>>> Personally I go for 7 but hey, that's just me. I have found that
>>>>> people/groups who jump right to "we're looking at SAN as the strategic
>>>>> direction of our company" are generally clueless about storage.
>>>>> They've heard enough about to think that it's "sexy" (or at least as
>>>>> sexy as IT gets) and want in on it.
>>>>>
>>>>> My thoughts are that SAN is a niche technology and that most things
>>>>> can be done very well by NAS. NAS is easier to manage, install,
>>>>> provision, etc. It offers alot of functionality with minimal
>>>>> complexity. That being said....
>>>>> The niche's that I think SAN fills are high end performance, OLTP,
>>>>> certain engineering and scientific simulations and calculations, etc.
>>>>> So the niche is big money. Hence the reason SAN's are so touted by
>>>>> vendors, imo.
>>>>>
>>>>> In any case, you'll get plenty of posts on this one I'm sure.
>>>>>
>>>>> ~F
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Yes, it was late .... info suppression sleep kicked in.
>>>>
>>>>Its basically corporate wan of approx 800 desktops (say 300 at hq, the
>>>>rest spread geographically around the uk at various sized offices)
>>>>running a multitude of servers with exchange2k, sql server, a soon to be
>>>>introduced email archiving facility to keep all mail for 7 years in some
>>>>form of sql database. Various file servers ... everything currently
>>>>running w2k apart from a couple of unix sco box's that run a new company
>>>>accounting app.
>>>>
>>>>Theres a push towards some sort of terminal services environment for all
>>>>of the regional/site offices so storage/email, etc can be centralised at
>>>>hq but this has been resisted so far due to the problems surrounding
>>>>connectivity with such as venture as once the links down no work can be
>>>>done kind of thing .... add to that the inability to realise the actual
>>>>amount of bandwidth needed for the desktop on TS to run smoothly ... so
>>>>this may not happen yet but I think it will eventually work its way in
>>>>over the next couple years.
>>>>
>>>>So, they expect to need somewhere between 10TB > 16TB over the next few
>>>>years with some ability to grow should the need arise.
>>>>
>>>>Some form of backup is going to be essential so dormant contracts can be
>>>>archived and moved off site, etc as well as uptime ... if they manage to
>>>>push through terminal services then the whole company is reliant on the
>>>>hq for everything ....
>>>>
>>>>What other sort of info is required .... ? Ive only ever looked at
>>>>storage from a single server point of view, how many disks in the raid
>>>>adg do we need sort of thing ....
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Given the applications you're describing I would say SAN is the way to
>>>go. Everything is host based in the environment you described so
>>>there's no need for sharing in the traditional sense.
>>>
>>>SAN's can easily scale to your capacity demands, and depending on your
>>>performance and availability requirements it can be done fairly
>>>inexpensively. Look outside of traditional SAN arrays from people
>>>like HDS, EMC, and IBM. Nexsan, Pillar Data, LSI Logic, DotHill, etc,
>>>can all provide FC based storage bricks that can scale and be fairly
>>>reliable/available, and for alot less money than the big names. It
>>>sounds to me like you could go that route given the huge network point
>>>of failure....
>>>
>>>I hear the Qlogic switches are quite good at the workgroup level as
>>>well. Enterprise class switches are still McData and now Cisco.
>>>Brocade's EC switch is something I would stay away from personally but
>>>their workgroup switches are excellent.
>>>
>>>Emulex and Qlogic are both good hba vendors.
>>>
>>
>>
>>agreed but
>>the san & nas question is pretty easy
>>if you want to replace file serving storage functions use NAS
>>if you want to replace direct access storage/functions use SAN
>
>But what *requires* which is not so easily defined all the time. Take
>Oracle for instance. Some would say you have to have block access,
>others say NFS rocks. So while block v. file is easy, defining what
>you need file for and what you need block for is not always as clear.
>
>>& while the vendors you mentioned are good ones they are Fibre
>>Channel related and iSCSI is finally starting to overtake them
>>in terms of capacity & performance, certainly in price.
>
>I just read that of the US$7.2billion SAN industry iSCSI got US$131mil
>of it last year. I don;t see any native iSCSI storage with the
>capacity or performance of an FC array. FC array's can reach 160TB
>internally, with the capacibilty of virualizing up to 35+PB of
>externally attached storage. Good luck with that on native iSCSI.
>Now most switch vendors are incorporating iSCSI blades so you can
>essentially make FC array's avaialble over iSCSI so the point may be
>moot.
>In terms of performance, iSCSI is not and cannot compete with FC on
>performance. At least not yet.
>
the new generation of native iSCSI storage that's delivering now has
some interesting concepts AND i think the #s next year will show a
different story of what happened this year since we're selling more
& more of it into mid range requirements
consider this, if every 14 bay iSCSI RAID has 3 Gig-E ports on it &
everytime you add another one to the mix a volume manager adds it to
the existing subsystem, what kind of IOP & transfer rate specs, let
alone capacity, do you think you can get out of an iSCSI subsystem ?
_____ . .
' \\ . . |>>
O// . . |
\_\ . . |
| | . . . |
/ | . www.EvenEnterprises.com . . . |
/ .| info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx . . . |
/ . | 310-544-9439 / 310-544-9309 fax . . . o
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorized - DIRECT VAR/VAD/Distributor for new mid-high end storage
iSCSI/NAS/SAN/RAID from EMC, HP, Equallogic, Quantum, OverLand Storage
.
- References:
- Re: when to nas or san
- From: Faeandar
- Re: when to nas or san
- From: Faeandar
- Re: when to nas or san
- From: Andy
- Re: when to nas or san
- From: Faeandar
- Re: when to nas or san
- Prev by Date: Re: when to nas or san
- Next by Date: CFP EUROSYS 2006
- Previous by thread: Re: when to nas or san
- Next by thread: Re: when to nas or san
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
