SAN for our Infrastructure

[Eddiefdz]

Hello All,

My company is interested in purchasing a SAN solution. We need a total of about 4TB storage space. We need a solution that will be both cost effective and viable to our organization. What are your recommendations as to solutions available out there. I am planning on moving all our file serving services as well as our VM images over to this SAN. What do you all recommend??

Thanks.

Eddie Fernandez
CCNA, Network+, A+, MCP

 

[Chacalinc]

Take a look to IBM (DS family), Hitachi Data Systems (AMS family), EMC (CLARiiON CX family), HP (EVA family).

Cheers,

Chacal, Inc.

 

[mbourne2006]

Hi

The only suggestion I would make is to try to stick to one vendor and one support organisation. It can be very frustrating when trying to help customers who have application, O/S, and storage device support through us, but whose SAN switches are outside our remit. Such set-ups tend to increase the complexity of troubleshooting and almost always result in problems remaining open for longer than necessary.

HTH


Kind Regards,
Matthew Bourne
"Find a job you love and never do a day's work in your life.

 

[Breslau]

I would second what mbourne2006 has said.

i know some ppl are wary of buying all their IT infrastructure from a single vendor due to costs, but in the case of storage needs it's well worth it. it's taken a lot of finger pointing down times for management in my organization to see the light.

if your hosts are IBM boxes, and the apps are mission critical to your org., then i'd go with a DS solution as well.

 

[rickkcir1]

Since we're disccussing SAN "AND" NAS, lets be fair.. NetApp has the only system that does 'both' out of the same box... Why manage two + systems, when you can manage one?

Otherwise, HPQ 's EFS has some intersing options leveraging Polyserve... but NetApp is a must to look at ... they are the #1 NAS player out there...... for valid reasons.

 

[Chacalinc]

NetApp has the only system that does 'both' out of the same box..

False. Hitachi provides you with the AMS1000, a modular storage that can have SAN and NAS in the same box.

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[rickkcir1]

Sorry .. but "False. Hitachi provides you with the AMS1000, a modular storage that can have SAN and NAS in the same box."

is false

EVERY major vendor claims to have a "unified solution" when in reality they bolt a NAS server onto their SAN storage... HP, HDS, EMC, and many others do this. I'm simply stating the a physically 'single' system, does both .. in fact, four protocols... FC and iSCSI SAN, and CIFS/NFS NAS....

 

[Chacalinc]

sorry, but HDS has as GA the AMS1000. It has the capability to have 2 different controller in any combination with SAN/NAS/iSCSI, so you can have SAN/SAN, SAN/NAS, SAN/iSCSI, NAS/iSCSI. No external server nor appliance is needed.

I agree with the rest (EMC, HP)

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.

 

[Chacalinc]

BTW, in HDS modular arrays you have the 2 protocols in the same box. with NSC55 and USP (High-End systems) you can have both FC, NAS, iSCSI, ESCON and FICON in the same box (natively, no external appliances).

HP and SUN are OEMs for Hitachi, so they sell the high-end (only) from Hitachi. EMC -with Symmetrix- as IBM -with Shark- can give you connectivity for iSCSI, FC, ESCON and FICON in the same box.

Cheers.

Chacal, Inc.