SAN setup

[TheTwist]

I am unfamiliar setting up SANs, I have only setup NAS.  I have been given to setup a  QSan Q500-P21-S316 SAN.  I have done the basic quick install on it. However i am not sure what to do to connect it to the domain.  

 

Do I need to create a iSCSI Target on my Windows Server domain controller to the SAN to communicate with the SAN? Or am i missing something else?

[Catsrules]

Yeah, you will need to setup iSCSI on your windows Server. Or whatever server you want to storage to be on.

SANs are all back end storage, no normal devices will ever directly talk to it. It will always go through some type of  server. Basically I look at as SAN is a very fancy external hard drive. (it isn't a perfect analogy but close).

You don't have to do this, but I would create a entirely separate network separate NICs a separate switch if you have more then two devices just for the SAN traffic to the servers. 

 

If your running any servers on top of hypervisors I would connect the SAN to the hypervisor and then store the VMs on the SAN

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are you using the san to store? Normally you would use it for vm storage.

 

What is your network setup?

 

Id hire someone that knows what there doing here.

 

 

[Catsrules]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are you using the san to store? Normally you would use it for vm storage.

 

What is your network setup?

 

Id hire someone that knows what there doing here.

 

 

In my particular configuration all of my servers are vertalized and running on hypervisors. The Hypervisors have nothing stored on them except for a small SSD for the Hypervisor OS. All of the VMs are storage on the SAN.  This makes it nice because if a hypervisor goes down, all I need to do is do a start the VMs on another hypervisor and we are backup in a few minutes. I don't need to copy files are or anything like that because the backend storage is the same.

The network is similar to what I described. All hypervisors have at least two nics one for SAN traffic and one for normal traffic. The SAN side has its own separate switch that the SAN and the servers all connect to.  If your san supports it you can also add fail over with dual network cards and dual switches.

 

Yes my SAN only stores VMs. It is just that the VMs have all of my data in them. 

 

 

This setup is probably the most common setup, but it really depends on what your trying to accomplish, I got my SAN because I was tired of dealing with crappy RAID arrays physically on the hypervisor and trying to keep track of what hypervisor stored what VMs. With this setup with my SAN, compute is completely separate from storage makes management a lot easier.

 

If your setup/goals are different maybe you just needed to SAN for one application then I would just connect it to that one server and let it does its thing.

 

 

Yeah, hiring a consistent or or contractor would be a good idea in this case. Especially if this is going to be you back end storage for the network.   Make sure they also setup a backup solution as well.

[TheTwist]

Thank you for your replies. 

 

It will only be used to put a lot of storage on to with large files. So we can work of them using the 10Gig connection. 

I am guessing the server wont need a 10Gig connection also?

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, TheTwist said:

Thank you for your replies. 

 

It will only be used to put a lot of storage on to with large files. So we can work of them using the 10Gig connection. 

I am guessing the server wont need a 10Gig connection also?

 

 

Who is putting storage on this? The workstations? The servers?

 

You probably want the server to have 10gbe.

 

Really, get someone in there that knows what there going, this seems like its going to perform much worse than it should or just fail one day.

[TheTwist]

18 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Who is putting storage on this? The workstations? The servers?

 

You probably want the server to have 10gbe.

 

Really, get someone in there that knows what there going, this seems like its going to perform much worse than it should or just fail one day.

 

The workstations be putting storage onto it.  

 

I'll see if i can get someone who knows what they're doing. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, TheTwist said:

 

The workstations be putting storage onto it.  

 

I'll see if i can get someone who knows what they're doing. 

So this is a share storage place for projects on the workstations? How fast does it need to be? Do users need to share volumes? What client os?

 

You normally don't want a san for this use case.

 

One thing about iSCSI is that it presents a block device to whatever the initiator is. The issue is if there is more than one initiator at a given time, those systems have to be synced. so they don't write over each other. This is done on windows server with clusted shared volumes, but I don't think thats supported on windows 10.

 

In this case the best option is probably to have a server(or pair in a cluster) mount this iSCSI volume, then share that volume over the network with SMB/CIFS to the clients to use. CIFS compared to iSCSI is made for the use for multiple workstations to use at once.

[leadeater]

On 11/16/2019 at 7:20 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

One thing about iSCSI is that it presents a block device to whatever the initiator is. The issue is if there is more than one initiator at a given time, those systems have to be synced. so they don't write over each other. This is done on windows server with clusted shared volumes, but I don't think thats supported on windows 10.

 

In this case the best option is probably to have a server(or pair in a cluster) mount this iSCSI volume, then share that volume over the network with SMB/CIFS to the clients to use. CIFS compared to iSCSI is made for the use for multiple workstations to use at once.

Sounds like a wrong tool for the job problem to me, equivalent NAS system would be much better but I guess if you have a lemon you need to find a way to make lemonade.

 

On 11/14/2019 at 5:50 AM, TheTwist said:

Do I need to create a iSCSI Target on my Windows Server domain controller to the SAN to communicate with the SAN? Or am i missing something else?

Never use a Domain Controller as a File Server, sharing the roles is a bad idea security wise and performance wise. Domain controllers by default enable SMB signing which has a performance impact and overloading the CPU on the DC is not a good idea.

 

Since you have a SAN that only does block storage you're pretty much doing to have to reevaluate your entire server environment and make some significant changes. Ideally you want to take what ever server you have now if it has a physical OS on it and migrate it to a VM using something like VMware Converter (if going to use ESXi) then install ESXi on the server then deploy the VM image on to it. Current Windows Server Standard Edition license give you two virtual server instance rights so you can create a dedicated File Server VM on to your hypervisor. Once you have your hypervisor of choice installed i.e. ESXi/Hyper-V/KVM/XenServer you create an iSCSI volume on your SAN then mount this on the hypervisor then provision this storage as a datasotre for hosting VMs on, this is where you would deploy the converted DC VM on to and create the File Server.

 

From that point you can create a secondary VM disk on the File Server VM for you network shares (NAS basically) and have all your workstations map this shared drive and store the files on it.

 

Problem is for someone not experienced in the above it's not a good idea to dive in to doing this work, the potential for mistake and loss of the DC entirely is too high.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Never use a Domain Controller ad a File Server, sharing the roles a bad idea security wise and performance wise. Domain controllers by default enable SMB signing which has a performance impact and overloading the CPU on the DC is not a good idea.

 

What are you thoughts on one windows server box for everything? I see this at a good amounter of small buineseess, esp before hyper-v was a thing. I am moving work to hyper-v with separate roles, but thats how it was when I got there.

 

Also I have forced on smb signing at work cause nist sp800-171, and haven't noticed a big change, but I'm also running on hdd only, and gigabit networking

 

 

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are you thoughts on one windows server box for everything? I see this at a good amounter of small buineseess, esp before hyper-v was a thing. I am moving work to hyper-v with separate roles, but thats how it was when I got there.

I've always hated Windows Small Business Server now Windows Server Essentials (I think?). It makes sense license wise due to the cost of license models aimed at larger networks, but I still greatly dislike it. At least Microsoft Exchange Server isn't crammed in their too anymore. A single server OS that is a DC, File Server, Print Server, Exchange Server.... hard pass.

[TheTwist]

Thank you for your comments everyone. Very useful.  This is far from my expertise  so I will try and speak to the boss if we could get someone in who knows what they are doing. 

 

Our client OS is Windows 10 

Users will need to share volumes

It needs to be quite fast as we are pulling of gigabytes of