Have what is probably a pretty basic question about setting up a SAN.

First off, I'm a networking guy at a fairly small but growing
company.
We (like everyone else on the planet ;) ) have a great deal of data
which needs to be centralized and archived. I'm looking at the HP
MSA1000 to meet our needs.
Separation of the data itself from the servers (All 10 of them) would
make management significantly easier, and disaster recovery would be
vastly simplified. We want to either mirror the contents of each of the
server's drives onto the SAN or migrate everything over to be running
over the SAN. This is my personal opinion; need to talk to the boss.

My question now is this:
Do I need to get a fiber channel adapter for each of these servers, or
could I just attach it to the preexisting copper gigabit Ethernet which
connects all of the servers? I would just as soon avoid another ten
grand in fiber adapter cards.

Also, any recommendations regarding which tape backup drives I should
look at for server-less backups if I go with the MSA1000?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

<timbrigham@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:1118172368.280374.111180@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Have what is probably a pretty basic question about setting up a SAN.
>
> First off, I'm a networking guy at a fairly small but growing
> company.
> We (like everyone else on the planet ;) ) have a great deal of data
> which needs to be centralized and archived. I'm looking at the HP
> MSA1000 to meet our needs.
> Separation of the data itself from the servers (All 10 of them) would
> make management significantly easier, and disaster recovery would be
> vastly simplified. We want to either mirror the contents of each of the
> server's drives onto the SAN or migrate everything over to be running
> over the SAN. This is my personal opinion; need to talk to the boss.

The latter is what everyone does to truly centralize the volumes for
consolidation. The former is quite possible though, although I've never
implemented it.

>
> My question now is this:
> Do I need to get a fiber channel adapter for each of these servers, or
> could I just attach it to the preexisting copper gigabit Ethernet which
> connects all of the servers? I would just as soon avoid another ten
> grand in fiber adapter cards.
>
Classic setup is you need at least one, two for redundancy, fibre channel
adapters in each server. If you got two adapters, you'll need to SAN
(actually fibre channel) switches and dual MSA1000 controllers. To avoid the
fibre channel adapters, you'd have to use iSCSI as the transport and the
MSA1000 does not have native iSCSI support (yet, hint). It doesn't even have
an ethernet connection.

If you do decide to go with iSCSI, you'll need an iSCSI initiator in each
server, which is in the Windows world could mean the free iSCSI initiator
from Microsoft.

On the storage side, you'd need a storage array with an iSCSI target.
Technically, it would be be possible to use an HP Storage Server with the
iSCSI feature pack, build a fibre channel SAN backend to the MSA1000 but to
me that would be overly complicated.

> Also, any recommendations regarding which tape backup drives I should
> look at for server-less backups if I go with the MSA1000?
>

You shouldn't be looking at server-less backups at all in my opinion.
Possible LAN-free backups, but even that is a stretch in many cases. Your
best and cheapest way forward is to use backup to disk over the regular
gigabit LAN connection. The disk could be SAN-attached, but doesn't have to
be. It's nice if you could for example stretch the fibre cable a bit so you
could place the backup disk in a physically seperate area from the primary
disk.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Ok, I'll axe the idea of adding server-less backups for now. I'm
also looking at truly migrating over the systems to be running off the
SAN.  I want to steer clear of the iSCSI protocol, but am still leery
about having to put in that many fiber cards, and having to go with
sixteen port switches.
If I were to get a standard gigabit Ethernet switch which includes a
fiber module, could I attach the SAN to the fiber port and the servers
to the gigabit Ethernet ports and have it work correctly?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Ok, I'll axe the idea of adding server-less backups for now. I'm
also looking at truly migrating over the systems to be running off the
SAN.  I want to steer clear of the iSCSI protocol, but am still leery
about having to put in that many fiber cards, and having to go with
sixteen port switches.
If I were to get a standard gigabit Ethernet switch which includes a
fiber module, could I attach the SAN to the fiber port and the servers
to the gigabit Ethernet ports and have it work correctly?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

<timbrigham@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:1118178634.554387.239970@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ok, I'll axe the idea of adding server-less backups for now. I'm
> also looking at truly migrating over the systems to be running off the
> SAN.  I want to steer clear of the iSCSI protocol, but am still leery
> about having to put in that many fiber cards, and having to go with
> sixteen port switches.
> If I were to get a standard gigabit Ethernet switch which includes a
> fiber module, could I attach the SAN to the fiber port and the servers
> to the gigabit Ethernet ports and have it work correctly?
>

No, it would not work. Ethernet and Fibre Channel are two different
protocols almost down to the fundamentals. They share the basic physcial and
encoding/decoding layers, but that's about it. A Gigabit Ethernet switch
would not understand Fibre Channel and vice versa.
You'll have to spring for one or two Fibre Channel switches, and all the
Fibre Channel host adapters I'm afraid. If you're into the MSA1000, don't
forget to check the small business kit, which might make the bitter pill of
buying all the kit a little easier to swallow.
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/...0smb/index.html

It's only meant for up to 8 servers though.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

<timbrigham@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1118178627.900640.270440@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ok, I'll axe the idea of adding server-less backups for now. I'm
> also looking at truly migrating over the systems to be running off the
> SAN.  I want to steer clear of the iSCSI protocol, but am still leery
> about having to put in that many fiber cards, and having to go with
> sixteen port switches.
> If I were to get a standard gigabit Ethernet switch which includes a
> fiber module, could I attach the SAN to the fiber port and the servers
> to the gigabit Ethernet ports and have it work correctly?
>

Using a an array with FC only interface and not putting an iSCSI gateway of
some kind in front of it, makes attaching the hosts via Ethernet impossible
(doesn't matter if the Enet switch uses copper or fibre connections.) While
the FC interface and a GigE interface may look physically similar they are
utterly different in terms of the underlying protocols and you can't mix
them.


--
Nik Simpson

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <1118172368.280374.111180@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
timbrigham@hotmail.com says...
>
>Have what is probably a pretty basic question about setting up a SAN.
>
>First off, I'm a networking guy at a fairly small but growing
>company.
>We (like everyone else on the planet ;) ) have a great deal of data
>which needs to be centralized and archived. I'm looking at the HP
>MSA1000 to meet our needs.
>Separation of the data itself from the servers (All 10 of them) would
>make management significantly easier, and disaster recovery would be
>vastly simplified. We want to either mirror the contents of each of the
>server's drives onto the SAN or migrate everything over to be running
>over the SAN. This is my personal opinion; need to talk to the boss.
>
>My question now is this:
>Do I need to get a fiber channel adapter for each of these servers, or
>could I just attach it to the preexisting copper gigabit Ethernet which
>connects all of the servers? I would just as soon avoid another ten
>grand in fiber adapter cards.
>
>Also, any recommendations regarding which tape backup drives I should
>look at for server-less backups if I go with the MSA1000?
>

not forgetting that SAN applies to iSCSI also, if you want all of
your servers to have access to the RAID on a Fibre Channel SAN
then you need to buy one HBA for each server

& i'd forget about "serverless backup"
even though it's been touted for years all you'l ever probably
get is "lan free backup" if you have a Fibre Channel SAN

Lastly, LTO has won the battle & AND both LTO-2 & 3 come with native
Fibre Channel interfaces

_____                         .     .
'    \\                  .                .                       |>>
O//             .                        .                    |
\_\          .                              .                  |
| |      .                                    .      .         |
/  |  .          www.EvenEnterprises.com        .   .    .      |
/  .|             info@EvenEnterprises.com        . .      .     |
/ .  |         310-544-9439 / 310-544-9309 fax      .        .  . o
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorized - DIRECT VAR/VAD/Distributor for new SCSI/FC-AL peripherals
NAS/SAN/RAID from HP, IBM, Seagate, EMC, QLogic, ATL, OverLand Data

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]