Building a SAN from the ground up......HELP!!!!

[Todd1215]

Hi,
I'm new to the SAN industry and have been tasked with building a SAN. The powers that be have thrown hardware at me and said..."ok, now build a SAN for us!" We'll it didn't happen quite like that but that's were I'm at today. I know that I've probably bitten off more than I can chew, but I have to swallow or I'm gonna choke!

So...I have all the hardware...(Fibre switches....storage....HBA's...hosts, etc...)

But what I'm really perplexed about is what software do I need? Do I need a SAN filesystem? Is there a specific SAN filesystem that would do the job for clustered Oracle doing OLTP? Do I really need a SAN Management system? Is it smart to build a seperate host to manage the SAN?

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would greatly appriciate it..

Todd

 

[comtec17]

You will have to walk the path of each host and figure out what patches, firmware, and/or drivers you will need to bring your hosts up to a supported configuration.

There is no SAN filesystem. The SAN disk looks, feels, and acts like it is local disk.

It is not easy to answer your question about SAN Management. It all depends on what your SAN configuration is, i.e.. Switch, DISK, HBA's

 

[vasquea1]

comtec is correct. For each system you will need to find the right drivers IE for Win nt4 w2k and 2k3.

can you name the brands of Hardware you bought.

 

[Todd1215]

HBA's are JNI 6410's
switches are Brocade 3200
Storage is Sun StorEdge A5200 (JBODS no RAID)
Hosts are Sun SunFire 280R.

 

[Rols]

Well....where do we start??? How long is a piece of string??
Its like asking someone - how do I build a network?

It might be worth investing some reading material.

Veritas "Storage Area Network Essentials" is a good one.

Have a go & post your specific problems when you come across them.

Good Luck.

Cheers

 

[Todd1215]

Yes that's pretty much what we are currently doing. I've got some reading to do. FYI - I posted my question because someone ( NOT in this forum ) made a statement that just because you have the hardware and make all the proper connections doesn't mean you have a SAN. But from what I've read so far ( light online reading ) we essentially do have the basics of a small SAN island.

So just for my own understanding and other professional opinions I posted the question here. I appriciate all your answers.

Thanks for your time...

 

[vasquea1]

what OS are you going to run on it?