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Home > Archive > Data Storage > August 2004 > Experience with Fibre-to-Fibre RAID controller?
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Experience with Fibre-to-Fibre RAID controller?
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| Marcel 2004-08-22, 5:45 pm |
| Hello All,
As mentioned before in this ng, I'm new and a little busy composing a small
san environment. Currently I'm looking on eBay to find some hardware but
can't find (or pay) an all-in-one solution that fits my needs.
I would like to use a disk array with onboard raid controller (raid 50) and
a fibre channel interface. Now I've found two separate devices: Dell
Powervault DAE 630F with fibre-channel and Eonraid 2000r2 SAN fibre-channel
raid controller.
The Powervault does not have any raid controller onboard, the Eonraid is an
external box equipped with six fibre-channel interfaces. Now I'm curious if
this could be shaped in a working san. Of course I've read the data-sheets
and therefore I'm almost sure this should work like a normal san (not that
I'm a san expert). But I just want to check it with you guys, it does
concern a lot of money for a single person and I don't want to buy expensive
stuff that is useless to me.
EonRaid 2000R2: http://www.infortrend.com/legacy_er2000.asp
So, someone have any experience or opinions about this matter?
Sincerely,
Marcel
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| Arne Joris 2004-08-25, 5:45 pm |
| Marcel wrote:
> Now I've found two separate devices: Dell
> Powervault DAE 630F with fibre-channel and Eonraid 2000r2 SAN fibre-channel
> raid controller.
> The Powervault does not have any raid controller onboard, the Eonraid is an
> external box equipped with six fibre-channel interfaces. Now I'm curious if
> this could be shaped in a working san.
It depends what you define as a SAN (or what you need a SAN for...).
Usually this includes at least one Fibre Channel switch, since the SAN is used
to allow a bunch of hosts to do IO to a bunch of storage over a fabric.
Now with this Eonraid, it seems that you have 4 or 6 FC ports you can connect to
either storage or hosts, and then you configure it to map luns on one or more
WWNs to Raided disk volumes.
It seems to me it lacks one of the key features of a SAN, which is
extensibility. A configuration with a proper RAID box and a switch can grow both
in number of hosts and number of raid boxes. Your config will be limited both in
the number of hosts and the number of disks.
Arne
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| Marcel 2004-08-27, 5:46 pm |
| "Arne Joris" <nospam@org.org> schreef in bericht
news:Dp8Xc.9200$A8.3082@edtnps89...
> Marcel wrote:
fibre-channel[vbcol=seagreen]
an[vbcol=seagreen]
if[vbcol=seagreen]
>
> It depends what you define as a SAN (or what you need a SAN for...).
> Usually this includes at least one Fibre Channel switch, since the SAN is
used
> to allow a bunch of hosts to do IO to a bunch of storage over a fabric.
>
> Now with this Eonraid, it seems that you have 4 or 6 FC ports you can
connect to
> either storage or hosts, and then you configure it to map luns on one or
more
> WWNs to Raided disk volumes.
>
> It seems to me it lacks one of the key features of a SAN, which is
> extensibility. A configuration with a proper RAID box and a switch can
grow both
> in number of hosts and number of raid boxes. Your config will be limited
both in
> the number of hosts and the number of disks.
>
> Arne
I didn't expect to grow as it is for a small (home) network.. I'll just wait
untill I've received a tutorial book that I've ordered last week. That
should improve my knowledge of san before I start buying hardware. Although
I did see some nice hardware with fair prices.
Marcel
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