General San discussion and recommendation

[hortonhearsawho]

Good morning everyone,

I have been assigned the task to migrate to a SAN solution from our current NAS. Can someone point me in the right solution of what are some good SAN solutions and what is involved in getting SAN up and going. I basically need a crash course on it and start to implement and migrated data. We are looking at around 2 terrabytes of data to backup and test recovery, etc. All help is much appreciated. Thank you.

 

[itsp1965]

IBM has a great redbook that introduces you to the basics of Storage Area Networks (although from an IBM product perspective)

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245470.html?Open

You can also check out the Storage Networking Industry Association website for some non-vendor specific tutorials

http://www.snia.org/home

Let's not forget.. google is a big help here

HTH

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

What you need to know first of all, is that a san costs money.A sh*tload of money .We are talking about multiple HBA's in your servers, san switches, fiber infrastructure.Advised is to get someone onsite to help you work out an architecture, once you have chosen a vendor.This is a minor cost, and will save you a big nightmare later.Popular vendors are : IBM,HP,NetApp,EMC,...
Each storage has its advantages and disadvantages.Don't let just the price determine your choice.Most of the times it is worth paying a few extra bucks to have more flexibility ( easy expansion of your san,resillience,cluster features,...).When you are talking about a san, you also need to think about backup infrastructure ( tape or D2D ),so again getting a guy onsite who has expertise in san's will help you a lot here.

rgds,

R.

 

[hortonhearsawho]

Thanks for the input.

 

[LeeMason]

How many servers will access this 2TB of data?

In terms of SANs a typical solution would include:

1. Fibre channel card(s) in each server (multiple cards = resilience)
2. One or two (for resilience) fibre channel switches
3. Single or dual (again for resilience) fibre channel based controllers
4. Multiple disk shelves for either FC (highest spec), SCSI (next fastest), SATA (good for large amount of data but lower performance) or SAS (similar to SCSI performance but generally not used as much) disks.

Drivers for FC controllers and for multi-path failover to be installed on all servers (dependent on OS).


Lee Mason
Optimal Projects Ltd

http://www.opl.co.uk

http://www.backupsanywhere.com

 

[SANEngInCO]

I could go into steps to set up a SAN, configure storage, work on hosts, etc but I really don't think that would truly benefit you and your situation. SAN, although not too complex once you get into it can be tough to navigate in the beginning.

I suggest that you engage some outside help to start. But I would not start with an actual manufacturer. I would go to a reseller, and preferably one that is more vendor-agnostic. Forsythe, ASG, etc. are just a few that come to mind from my dealings. Have them take you through what a SAN actually is, what it takes to set one up and what the ballpark costs will be. Then they can take you through your lists of what you need and don't need, what you want to accomplish and any budgetary information to help you narrow down your manufacturer choices.

I have used HDS, SUN, EMC, IBM and NetApp to this point and really prefer HDS to any of them. But I will let you work with them to determine the best choices for you.

I would try and get it down to 2 or 3 manufacturers and then bring them in to give you their brief on their company and systems.

The vendor-neutral reseller will give you advice based on your needs, not the manufacturer's needs which is key to accomplishing your goals quickly, correctly and on budget.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want more detailed info on the actual design and layout. I would be more than happy to take you through it.

Jason

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