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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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Can I run iostat on a Synology?

I have a Synology RS812RP+ which I'm using for a little bit of departmental testing. I've stuffed a bunch of SSD disks in it, and I'm curious about monitoring the disk IO. iostat doesn't come pre-installed on the synology and it doesn't have the…
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Can i pause VM's while power-cycling iscsi storage array

Unfortunately I may have to power-cycle my storage array. In the context of using KVM with libvirt managing the Virtual Machines where i need to power-cycle the storage array, is it possible or even advisable to : pause the VM's flush and turn…
janos erdelyi
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Cheap but Highly Available Shared Storage?

my group is in the market for plentiful storage. We traditionally used big-iron FC-attached SANs, but they are way expensive and provide much more performance than we require. We want highly available shared storage, and if it performs like local…
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Setup of HP ProCurve 2810-24G for iSCSI?

I have a pair of ProCurve 2810-24G that I will use with a Dell Equallogic SAN and Vmware ESXi. Since ESXi does MPIO, I am a little uncertain on the configuration for links between the switches. Is a trunk the right way to go between the switches? I…
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Windows share: The specified network name is no longer available

We've got an EMC NX4 SAN box serving a CIFS share to a number of Windows Server 2008 R2 app servers. The app servers are using the CIFS share to serve lots of image files (~2500 ops/sec on the share), however neither the SAN nor the app servers are…
Mark S. Rasmussen
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What are the most important aspects to consider when choosing a SAN for a small office virtualization project?

I am in the process of consolidating 6 physical servers running 6 different operating system flavors (don't ask) into two identical physical servers (Dell PowerEdge 2900), using the free VMware ESXi 4.0 platform. We will install an iSCSI SAN over a…
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What is "deduplication"?

I mean, I can look up the dictionary definition, but why is everyone suddenly talking about it in reference to virtual tape libraries? What's "new" here so that it's so much in the news lately?
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What Makes Cloud Storage (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, google Apps) different from Traditional Data center storage networking (SAN and NAS)?

Some confusion because of my question so to make it simple : "What kind of storage do big cloud providers use and why?" As far as i understand, however I am not able to find any kind of official Storage networking differences between typical data…
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Can I dynamically expose an entire SCSI host over Fibre Channel, preferably in Linux

Is it possible to expose an entire SCSI host dynamically (an LSI HBA or RAID card) over Fibre Channel, if so how? Preferably on Linux (perhaps targetcli) and with disk hotplugging support. (i.e. unplug/replug a disk in the target and the initiator…
Charlie Camilleri
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EMC ScaleIO vs Starwind Virtual SAN

I'm setting a test lab to evaluate best solution for future production use. The production farm intended for an SMB, so budget is present, but it is also limited. Goal for production: 3 hyperconverged servers with Windows Server 2012 R2 failover…
Eugene
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Miserable performance of Hyper-V storage on CSV

I recently setup a new environment consisting of: - QSAN Storage with 10Gib network - Mellanox switches 10Gib - 4 x Physical nodes connect to LAN and SAN 10Gib The physical hosts are connected using MPIO to the SAN storage, performance tests were…
inzanez
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Using SAN Replication/Snapshots for SQL Server disaster recovery?

We have a web application that utilizes SQL Server 2008 on a single database server. All storage is local. For the past year we have been trying to get any form of SQL Server Replication to work with our configuration, but it won't. The reason is…
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iSCSI using uplink ports on switch

Do the uplink ports on switches typically work okay as iSCSI ports? We're adding a 10gb iSCSI SAN, and want to get a combo switch (48x1gb & 4x10gb SFP+ uplink ports) and use the 10gb for the iSCSI SAN, while the 1gb are for a 1gb iSCSI SAN. We were…
Gregory Thomson
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Windows 2008 Unknown Disks

I have a BL460c G7 blade server with OS Windows 2008 R2 SP1. This is a brand new C7000 enclosure, with FlexFabric interconnects. I got my FC switches setup and zoned properly to our Clariion CX4, and can see all the hosts that are assigned FCoE…
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What is a storage area network (SAN)? and What are some of the ways that it can be used?

I need some good examples and links to companies that you are already using for buying SAN hardware, SAN data centers, etc.,
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