Hardware for SAN

[gerwinwawo]

Hallo!

I have to buy the hardware for building up a SAN.
This SAN should be connected to a Linux Cluster.
The cluster should be for High Performance.

At the moment I have 30 Dell PowerEdge R300 Computer (4x 1GB RAM, 2x HD's Sata 160GB, 4 Processors).

For Data Storage I need about 1 Petabyte.

The idea is to by the hardware from Dell.

For I am new in this area, I don't know which hardware to buy.

What do I need?
How many and which HD's?
How many racks?

Which kind of RAID should I use?
Do I need a Volume Controller?

Can anybody help me by given me an example of a hardware constellation?

Thanks a lot!!!

 

[kmcferrin]

If all 30 servers are going to be connecting to the same SAN AND your goal is performance then you're going to need something pretty beefy. Any solution that meets your need is going to be fairly complex and expensive, so I would be hesitant to do it yourself.

Since you appear to favor Dell hardware I would start with them. They sell their own low-end disk arrays, Equallogic iSCSI arrays (owned by Dell), and they also resell EMC products. They should be able to cover the full spectrum of storage products. But I would also look for some other vendors as well. What you need to do is determine your requirements and then provide them to the vendors to let them design the solution. Things to consider:

Starting capacity
Annual growth rate
Expandability of the solution
Performance requirements for each server in IOPS and aggregate requirements
Costs for the solution
Costs for annual maintenance/support
Methods of backup/DR protection
iSCSI vs Fiber Channel

There's probably a lot more than that to consider, but your prospective vendors can help you with a lot of it.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Server Administrator
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator
MCITP:Virtualization Administrator 2008 R2
Certified Quest vWorkspace Administrator

 

[gerwinwawo]

Hi kmcferrin!

Thanks for that info!

I think, like you said, I would be the best to connect myself with different providers (vendors) to make a design of that SAN!

Thanks