NAS or SAN?

Tue Jan 18 18:03:04 PST 2005

As usual, it depends on tasks/requirements/budget

* proposed 1TB ( 4x 300GB @ $250 ) solution is OK,
but I can see only ~500GB of reliable (RAID 1) usable storage
Besides, there is no scalability and performance can suffer as well
(I assume ATA drives, based on price)

* NetApps are really great (robust and quite easy to deploy)
but pricey and have limited functionality (embeded OS)

* FC SAN can be pricey too, but fast, flexible and extremely scalable
If you ok with previous generation (1GB) and used HW,
FC SAN can be affordable also

* iSCSI or FCIP are new and not widely supported

* I completely support the idea to stick with one vendor
to minimize incompatibilities - e.g. Sun provides full product line
to build FC SAN: storage, FC switches, HBA, servers and software

* This resource can be useful:
http://storagemagazine.techtarget.com/

On Tue, Jan 18, 2005 at 04:21:59PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005, Rich LaReau wrote:
> 
> > One of my customers is looking to expand their storage, and has asked for 
> > some advice about what's available, etc.  I've used one of the new Linksys 
> > Etherfast devices which seemed simple and robust, but was wondering if 
> > anybody here has had more experience with other pure NAS devices, something 
> > like NetApps or even an iSCSI SAN router like the one from Sanrad?  Is it 
> > pretty much a price/storage/speed issue, or would you pay more for 
> > something more "standard?"
> 
> you'd be paying "lot less" for something more "standard" than san/nas ...
> 
> 	1TB ( 4x 300GB @ $250 ) is cheap ( still one 1U chassis )
> 
> 	12TB - 15TB ( blades ) in 4U starts to get pricy in terms of
> 	"time" and backup process/proceedure/policy/scripting
> 	
> if they have emc/brocade and other vendors... it's best to stay with
> those vendors to minimize incompatibilities and finger pointing
> 
> if they simply "mount remote-backup:/opt/BACKUP /mnt/BACKUP"
> to their local servers, than simple secure nfs will be 5x cheaper and just
> as fast or faster with the same fiber nic cards
> 
> c ya
> alvin
> 
________________
Regards,
Sergey Galitskiy