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Questions tagged [storage-area-network]

A SAN is a Storage Area Network, for providing block-level access to storage subsystems across a network.

SANs provide block-level access to servers across a network. Commonly used SAN technologies are iSCSI and Fiber-channel (sometimes spelled Fibre-channel)

A Storage Area Network is distinctly different from Network Attached Storage (NAS). SAN systems don't provide any file-level access, although some combined (hybrid) systems exist which combine the features of a SAN device with those of a NAS.

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Cost effective and frugal SAN solution for under $5000?

I will have 3-4 servers that will need SAN access for both IOPS performance, and raw storage capacity. The limit is, cost. Solutions I have seen run $10,000+ for anything 9TB or higher. If I were to build my own, what hardware would you recommend…
Jason
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Correct placement of devices on a Fibre Channel fabric

We're getting a pair of new 8Gb switches for our fibre channel fabric. This is a Good Thing since we're running out of ports in our primary datacenter, and it'll allow us to have at least one 8Gb ISL running between our two datacenters. Our two…
sysadmin1138
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Is there a Distributed SAN/Storage System out there?

Like many other places, we ask our users not to save files to their local machines. Instead, we encourage that they be put on a file server so that others (with appropriate permissions) can use them and that the files are backed up properly. The…
Joel Coel
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Using non-certified hard drives in Dell MD3220 storage array

Is it possible to use non-certified hard drives in a Dell MD3220 storage array? I ended up getting 3 new drives that were the EXACT same model number as the existing ones. Then I bought the drive caddies to go with them. The drives I'm working…
Arvo Bowen
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ZFS stripe on top of hardware RAID 6. What could possibly go wrong?

I have 36*4TB HDD SAN Rack. RAID controller did not support RAID60 and not more than 16 HDDs in one RAID group. So I decided to make 2 RAID6 groups of 16HDD or 4 of 8 HDDs. I want to get all storage as one partition. So, what could possibly go wrong…
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Mixing HBAs in a failover cluster?

I have a two server failover cluster, and for various reasons - they're on mismatched hardware. One has Emulex HBAs installed, the other Qlogic. I'd be twitchy about using two different makes/models of card for multipathing within a box. I'm…
Sobrique
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SAN with a few SSD drives, or lots of old fashioned HDDs?

My company is trying to figure out what type of SAN to purchase. This is specifically for database servers that are becoming IO constrained (storage is DAS right now, but we're hitting the limit of a single server and we'd like to add clustering as…
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Fibre Channel LUN rescan and QLogic

I have a serious problem with a SAN storage array connected to a Linux box through Fibre Channel. Here is the configuration : Debian with plain vanilla linux 2.6.27.25 Fibre controller QLogic 4Gb dual port ( ISP2432 based) Basically the problem…
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Why MPIO instead of 802.3ad Team for iSCSI

Doing my first server to iSCSI target and I thought i would be off to a running start by teaming my NIC on the server (conventional 802.3ad team). However, from many online sources I see this is NOT recommended and MPIO should be used instead (there…
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Is brand-name NAS overpriced?

NetGear's ReadyNAS 2100 has 4 disk slots and costs $2000 with no disks. That seems a bit too expensive for just 4 disk slots. Dell has good network storage solutions too. PowerVault NX3000 has 6 disk slots, so that's an improvement. However, it…
Mircea Chirea
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"Mandatory" free space on a SAN?

I'm not an expert of SANs, I'm writing here to get some clues on continuous and exasperating problems we're having which our supplier seems not to be able to solve. we own an ENHANCE ES3160P4 SAN with 16 x 2 Tb disks that has been supplied for our…
z2k
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Why should iscsi traffic be isolated?

Why should iscsi SAN traffic be isolated? I'm trying to explain to my network guy why we should isolate the traffic.
Jeffery Jarrells
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Array free space requirement

The general rule of thumb is don't use more than 80-85% of your capacity, otherwise performance degrades sharply, and other bad stuff may happen. On a 8TB array, this comes out to around 1.6TB of space that must be left free! A 40TB array would…
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How Fibre Channel Frames are populated and traverse a Fabric?

Trying to wrap my head around how Fibre Channel Frames are actually populated and sent through a switched fabric. I Understand WWNN WWPN, WWNN is a WWN of the actual HBA, and WWPN are the WWN of the actually ports on the card. So if a HBA has 4…
Jim
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How to efficiently share host's folder with KVM guests?

I am configuring the service which stores plenty of files uploaded by nginx in /srv/storage dir on host system. These files are processed by worker KVM guests which may create new files or assign extended attributes to existing ones. Files are never…
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