Thanks for the warning.

I do plan on minimizing the number of LUNs, but my boss asked the question
and I wanted to be sure to have the /right/ answer instead of the
/right-now/ answer.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger Seielstad [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 7:51 AM
> To: NT 2000 Discussions
> Subject: RE: Basic SAN question
> 
> 
> Chris,
> 
> Most vendors will allow you to slice and dice a SAN array 
> into as many LUNs of whatever size you want. Its absolutely 
> the wrong thing to do, but it certainly can be done.
> 
> Any time a phisical platter is partitioned, you're going to 
> take a performance hit - simply put, the heads can't be in 
> two places at once, so if two systems are trying to access 
> data which is physically on the same platter, but logically 
> on different LUNs, there is head contention, and one of the 
> two must wait for the other to finish "using" the heads, and 
> then pay the additional price of a head seek across the 
> platter to its assigned set of cylinders.
> 
> In the case of your single 500GB RAID5 set in your SAN being 
> split into 300/100/50/50, you have in reality created 4 
> partitions on each spindle, with 60%/20%/10%/10% split on 
> each spindle. With a large number of platters, and larger 
> stripe sizes, its theoretically possible to reduce the 
> chances of contention within the SAN, but realistically 
> speaking, chances are there is going to be some contention, 
> and therefore some performance hits associated with managing 
> your disks this way.
> 
> Its one of the lies^H^H^H^H omissions commonly done in the 
> sales pitches of the big storage vendors.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Roger D. Seielstad - MCSE
> Sr. Systems Administrator
> Inovis - Formerly Harbinger and Extricity
> Atlanta, GA
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Levis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 2:07 PM
> > To: NT 2000 Discussions
> > Subject: Basic SAN question
> > 
> > 
> > If you have a RAID-5 array of (let's say) 500GB, can you
> > create LUNs of an
> > arbitrary size to be presented to the servers?  E.g, a 300GB, 
> > a 100GB, and
> > two 50GB?   Or is there a convention that all LUNs have to be 
> > a uniform
> > size?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ___________________________
> > Chris Levis
> > Applied Geographics, Inc.
> > 
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