|
Home > Archive > Data Storage > December 2005 > What is the need in SANs?
You are viewing an archived Text-only version of the thread.
To view this thread in it's original format and/or if you want to reply to
this thread please [click here]
| Author |
What is the need in SANs?
|
|
| Maxim S. Shatskih 2005-12-14, 5:48 pm |
| From what I know, SANs require the very expensive (not-mass-market-at-all)
hardware, hard-to-deal-with optical cables (limits on bend radius, hardships in
attaching connectors), and hard-to-manage software.
Then the question: is is practical to use SANs in small networks with, say,
~50 desktops and several servers? For such amount of computers, the reliability
of mass-market hardware is more or less enough, given its failure rates. You
will not lose much time or money on replacing the failed parts, and the money
loss on this - in the organization of such a size - can be smaller then moving
to expensive RAID boxes (like HP EVA or such), SCSI drives, SANs etc.
What advantages can SAN bring to the business of such a size?
--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
| |
| Anton Rang 2005-12-15, 5:53 pm |
| "Maxim S. Shatskih" <maxim@storagecraft.com> writes:
> From what I know, SANs require the very expensive
> (not-mass-market-at-all) hardware, hard-to-deal-with optical cables
> (limits on bend radius, hardships in attaching connectors), and
> hard-to-manage software.
You can build a SAN with iSCSI, if you'd prefer. It won't have the
same performance as Fibrechannel, but for many environments that's
fine.
> Then the question: is is practical to use SANs in small networks
> with, say, ~50 desktops and several servers?
Well, what problem are you trying to solve?
There are a lot of video editing environments, for instance, that use
SANs on even smaller networks, perhaps with only a handful of systems.
For instance, there may be a digitizing system, some systems for
online editing, and some systems for rendering, sharing the storage.
In this environment, the SAN allows users to easily pass work from one
station to another, and to have a single, backed-up, large pool of
storage.
-- Anton
| |
| Faeandar 2005-12-18, 2:46 am |
| On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:55:27 +0300, "Maxim S. Shatskih"
<maxim@storagecraft.com> wrote:
> From what I know, SANs require the very expensive (not-mass-market-at-all)
>hardware, hard-to-deal-with optical cables (limits on bend radius, hardships in
>attaching connectors), and hard-to-manage software.
>
> Then the question: is is practical to use SANs in small networks with, say,
>~50 desktops and several servers? For such amount of computers, the reliability
>of mass-market hardware is more or less enough, given its failure rates. You
>will not lose much time or money on replacing the failed parts, and the money
>loss on this - in the organization of such a size - can be smaller then moving
>to expensive RAID boxes (like HP EVA or such), SCSI drives, SANs etc.
>
> What advantages can SAN bring to the business of such a size?
Flexibility.
For the most part, SAN is just DAS with some
bells/whistles/options. Flexibility is what those represent.
If you find you're utilization is highy varied across hosts, a SAN
will help. If you find you need host/application based failover, a
SAN can help.
If you find you need pure, raw performance, DAS is still the winner.
If you need multi-client access then NAS would likely be your
solution, though opinions on that vary like the color spectrum.
So, as usual, it all depends on what the problem is. But the size of
the environment is usually not the issue these days. Entry level
SAN's can be had for a pittance compared to 3 years ago. And even the
smallest environments sometimes benefit from the flexibility a SAN can
provide.
~F
|
|
|
|
|