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How difficult is it to build a fibre channel san network?
I’ve been involved with maintaining networks for several years, but have never actually built one. The small firm that I work for is interested in creating their own san network and I’ve been asked to head up the project. Do you think it’s possible, with my limited experience, to build the network myself, or should I opt to hire an outside consultant to help? The network would need to connect 2 Windows based servers, and 1 Linux server. Upper management would like to use fibre channel, but are aware of our budget restrictions. What other connection protocols should we look into? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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4 Answers
iSCSI is pretty mature for both Windows and Linux these days, and typically would be cheaper than Fibre Channel. Linux would work great with an NFS solution, but I'm not sure the Windows servers would work as well with that.
Fibre Channel can get expensive and complicated in a hurry. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the extra cost of an outside consultant, but I would recommend that you take your time in meeting with vendors and understanding exactly how all the pieces would fit together before implementing anything.
Hi David:
Before anything I assume that you establish the benefits in terms of cost that means to have a SAN, I mean, do the company going to have benefits doing that? may be do you need just to add an storage system and is going to do the same job. The SAN will give you the possibility to add space or drive to each individual server and to increase dinamically the space on any dive or volume, it will also provide faster way for backups and replications. IT is not quit complicated depends on the size and environment and in your case seems that is not a hudge one. It is not a bad idea have some advisors with you but to define eactly what you need in term of SAN becuase if not may be your are going to have at the end a 747 when you just need a car. I the implementation process you can work directly assisted by customer support and some technical manuals.
Good Luck
iSCSI is perfect for small business, significantly less expensive, much easier to understand and initially architect than FC technology. The only drawback to iSCSI is the speed, so I would not recommend this technology for high I/O database use.
Few tips for the iSCSI implementation:
- Buy the SAN from vendor/technology partner who can provide initial implementation assistance
- You need to run iSCSI on Gigabit Ethernet capable switch
- Make sure to create new dedicated VLAN for your iSCSI traffic or procure separate network switch
- Utilize multipaths from server to SAN for added reliability and fault tolerance
Obtain a high-speed internet connection around 20Mbps. Then create an Fast Ethernet system. Connect everything to your computers and your storage servers as needed. Other protocols to look at is the CSMA/CD.
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JC McDowell
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