Discussion about SAN/NAS

[whcdavid]

As you know most of the companies use SAN/NAS solution and they use SAN for their production servers. NAS normally uses in their development. Feel free to dicuss about SAN/NAS solution.

Thanks,
David K.

[green]

We currently do not use SAN/NAS but are looking at probably doing so it the future. Currently we have storage areas on our servers where users store very important files and a separate server to hold databases.

Users mainly use their computers for data storage.

I would like to here other peoples SAN/NAS solution reviews inorder to help in making a decision when we decide to implement it.

[molly00000]

We are using NAS for data storage and i would recommend it because it provides very fast access and storage cost also comes out to be low.

[whitey]

SAN and NAS devices both have their places. If you are just looking for raw disk space with low transactions NAS is fine, some of the new iSCSI SAN's would probably be a better fit in the long run. If you are doing any type of clustering or housing high I/O applications a SAN is a must. If you are looking to do a SAN on a budget the new Dell MD3000i boxes are pretty nice.

[marchen]

Hi whitey,

Have you tested EMC solution? I believe they provide best solution among other providers, but our company is switching to HP to save money. Do you use RAID 5?

[whcdavid]

Marchen,

We are using EMC and we don't get much issue with it. Also, they have lots of debugging tools which comes with their package.

[whitey]

Currently we have deployed an EMC CX3-40, and a CX3-20. The disk is setup into different tiers to fit the application. So yes we deploy RAID 5, as well as RAID 10. The EMC product is great and it suits our business model. Hitachi makes a decent product, and HP is not to bad either.

How much data are you looking to place on the SAN? What are the primary application that will be utilizing the SAN?

[KenB]

You may also wish to consider iSCSI as an alternative to a traditional fiberchannel SAN architecture. Many enterprises, including ours, find it much less expensive to purchase, maintain and support.

Ken

[marchen]

Basically, SAN commonly uses fiber channel to interconnects. A NAS uses ethernet and TCP/IP connections. Am I right?

[whitey]

Yes and No, iSCSI can be used for SAN connectivity as well.