Tell me about it! A few years ago, we bought our first iSCSI SAN (we needed a SAN) to hold some databases in a MS fail-over cluster. As to the SAN itself failing, well, it has only a NIC for the LAN and a NIC for the iSCSI connections. It has only a single power supply. There is no redundancy for those components, and no room for expansion (other than a couple of drive bays). It works, but it's a technical dead end.
Our second SAN (FS) is an IBM for our VMWare installation and is about 3 years old now. Unfortunately, we've outgrown this one. It can be expanded for more capacity with another shelf full of disks. However, we have an engineer who sees this as a dead end (for one thing, it can be used only for our VMWare), so we're looking to invest in something which can meet a number of needs for years to come. In other words, SAN technology can go "old tech" pretty quickly. Wait until you really need a SAN before investing. -- Richard D. McClary Systems Administrator, Information Technology Group ASPCA® 1717 S. Philo Rd, Ste 36 Urbana, IL 61802 [email protected] P: 217-337-9761 C: 217-417-1182 F: 217-337-9761 www.aspca.org The information contained in this e-mail, and any attachments hereto, is from The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA ®) and is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or use of the contents of this e-mail, and any attachments hereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify me by reply email and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout thereof. "N Parr" <[email protected]> wrote on 09/23/2010 09:25:53 AM: > I think you just need to give up on your SAN dreams and go buy a decent > NAS for a couple grand and call it good. You just said it's going to be > a file server for the time being so why spend the money for a SAN now if > you don't need it. I bet if I look back through the archives you first > brought this up at least 18 months ago. When, if , you do need a SAN > down the road you won't have already spent a ton of $$ on what will then > be old tech and you can start looking at what will then be new. > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Aldrich [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 9:17 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: SAN question > > Ok, guys. I'm trying to narrow down my many choices with regards to our > on-going search for a SAN manufacturer. I'd like your thoughts on the > whole question of adding more intelligence vs just adding more disks. > i.e. the EQ vs LeftHand models. > > I can see arguments to be made for both models. I'll tell you that, > initially, the SAN is going to be a glorified file server, however, we > plan on hosting our email data store on the SAN when we bring email > in-house later on. I've already verified with the email vendor that I > hope to use that this is not a problem, so that's a non-issue. Other > than that, the only database we would store on the SAN would possibly be > the database from our Vipre install, although initially that would stay > on the local storage. > > So, I'd like to see some discussions of the benefits of just adding a > tray of "dumb drives" or adding a complete controller along with the > drives (a la > LeftHand.) > > I just don't know enough about the benefits of each model to know what > would work best for us. I'm hoping that you guys who are more > experienced would give me the benefit of your knowledge. > > > > Thanks, > John Aldrich > IT Manager, > Blueridge Carpet > 706-276-2001, Ext. 2233 > > > > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software. > com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
