HP Storage Server Replacement

[boydbischke]

My company has a dilemma that I am not well equipped to handle. I'm hoping some storage experts here could lend a hand.

We have purchased an HP EVA4400 SAN. We share a portion of that san using NAS (NFS/CIFS) with an HP Windows Storage Server solution. Most of the servers in our environment are Solaris, but a few are Windows.

We have the following problems with the HP solution:
-It is currently not configured in a highly available fashion, and therefore represents a single point of failure.
-We periodically run into strange permission issues. We attribute this to how the Windows Storage Servers map from Windows Permissions to Unix Permissions.
-We have had some compatibility issues with NFSv4.
-The setup is overly complex, requiring us to run NIS and Active Directory, which we otherwise would not.

We are going to get rid of this Windows Storage Server solution and replace it with something that will operate more seamlessly? Could somebody offer suggestions for a solution that would meet the following criteria:

-Straightforward to set up
-Offers high availability (clustering between two of these solutions)
-Shares NFS and CIFS
-Can connect into HP EVA4400 SAN
-Performs reasonably well
-Costs less than $30k for two production servers/filers and one DR server/filers.

I would probably prefer a preconfigured appliance, but would be open to a software solution.

Thanks so much for any guidance you can provide.

 

[LeeMason]

The EVA is a pretty high end solution. When you say "It is currently not configured in a highly available fashion, and therefore represents a single point of failure" what exactly are you referring to (disks, controllers, Fibre switches, etc)?

Is the Windows server connected to the SAN using a fibre connection? In this case I doubt that the EVA is at fault for permissions problems.

What are the compatibility problems with NFSV4?

Can you explain why you are running ADS and NIS? If you don't want a Windows server then you could provide CIFS access using SAMBA on one of your SUN boxes.

More information would be required to give a more detailed answer.


Lee Mason
Optimal Projects Ltd

http://www.opl.co.uk

http://www.backupsanywhere.com

 

[boydbischke]

Lee,

Thanks for your reply.

The EVA is fine; we haven't had much in the way of problems with it. The problem is that we have an HP server running "Windows Storage Server" (actually two of them) sitting in front of the EVA to serve NFS. So, I'll specifically speak to your questions below.

>>The EVA is a pretty high end solution. When you say "It is currently not configured in a highly available fashion, and therefore represents a single point of failure" what exactly are you referring to (disks, controllers, Fibre switches, etc)?

I'm only talking about the NFS servers that sit in front of the SAN. There is no problem with the SAN.

>> Is the Windows server connected to the SAN using a fibre connection? In this case I doubt that the EVA is at fault for permissions problems.

Yes it is, but the permissions problems are happening between other servers and the NFS servers, not between the NFS servers and the SAN. This is probably related to the NFS servers using "Windows Services for UNIX".

>> What are the compatibility problems with NFSV4?

I wasn't the one who specifically ran into these problems, but I know we had to run the v3 client on all our servers.

>> Can you explain why you are running ADS and NIS? If you don't want a Windows server then you could provide CIFS access using SAMBA on one of your SUN boxes.

The servers in our environment are both Windows and UNIX. This is how HP suggested that we configure their Windows-based NFS server to share CIFS to Windows and NFS to UNIX/Linux. The purpose if for mapping users between windows and Unix.

We definitely could set up our own custom install of this using Sun Cluster and serving the NFS and CIFS ourselves, but we wouldn't have any vendor support if thing went badly. However, this configuration could be hard to get HA right, could be prone to error, and may not perform as well as is possible.

I was hoping somebody could provide me with some mid-range vendor (appliance or software) options that could fulfil this need for us.

Thanks!

 

[LeeMason]

I know it won't give you manufacturers support but I really like OpenFiler (

http://www.openfiler.com).

NFSV4 is currently not supported but is in testing at present. Although it is based on Open Source they do provide full commercial support and a number of fibre channel adapters are supported to provide connectivity with your EVA/Fibre SAN infrastructure.

If you installed two OpenFilers they can provide Active/Passive high availability clustering for the backend storage as well.

As far as I know they have offices in both the US and UK.


Lee Mason
Optimal Projects Ltd

http://www.opl.co.uk

http://www.backupsanywhere.com

 

[boydbischke]

Thanks for that suggestion. I will explore that product.

There are two other options I'm also looking at:
-HP appears to have a higher end product from PolyServer that stinks less than the Windows Storage Server.
-We could set up an active-active Sun Cluster and serve NFS from it. From there we could also serve CIFS in active-passive.

Boyd

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

I would propose to setup a NetApp V-Series in front of the EVA (which does not stink )

NetApp Certified NCDA/NCIE-SAN

 

[boydbischke]

You don't know how badly I'd love to have a NetApp V-Series in front of this EVA. I know they are awesome products.

Problem is that this setup (for 3 filers) would probably cost me about $150k. Unfortunately our budget for this project isn't particularly large since we're a growing company.

 

[LeeMason]

Active-Active SUN cluster sounds good. It would give you the high availability that you need. Also possible would be the same based on Linux-HA/heartbeat.

Lee

Lee Mason
Optimal Projects Ltd

http://www.opl.co.uk

http://www.backupsanywhere.com