On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Brad Knowles wrote: > Isilon is not really in the same space -- they provide a virtualization > front-end, but not the back-end storage itself.
I don't know what they've been in the past, but they are certainly a full storage solution. Their architecture is similar to XIV -- a massive array of small nodes, each with its own CPU, memory, and disks. Each node can have 2,3,6,9, or 12 TB in a 2U (or 36TB in a 4U). They also have non-disk nodes for performance, and disk-only nodes for capacity. It all plugs together into a huge array with non-spindle-based data protection (the "RAID" is done at the file level). > One name that I would recommend putting on the list is Panasas. I've heard > good things about them. Yeah, we've got them on the list also. > Or, what happens when something goes wonky and you have to reboot the whole > filer, and thus take down virtually every single critical system you have? There are pros and cons to any solution. What I would love to see is a true cluster type of system that's virtualized on the front. We have an IBM SVC for our SAN, and it makes things much simpler. If I have to upgrade a Clariion, and need to guarantee uptime, I can just migrate the LUNs to another Clariion, an EVA, a Compellent, or whatever else I've got. A single namespace up front for NAS with multiple units in the backend would be great, because I could migrate home shares or archive important document repositories to cheaper storage behind the scenes without changing the location information for CIFS and NFS clients. > I understand the desire for economies of scale in consolidation, but there > are very real costs to putting all your eggs in one basket. This is a > situation that you want to go into with both eyes wide open, and know what > you're getting yourself into. Absolutely. Thanks, Brad. -Adam _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
