SAN??

[bjr23]

The company I with is considering a new San using the Fibre Channel storage system/structure located in a separate building300-400 feet away. An new communication conduit has been run under ground. We dabbled with the NAS and found it slow and limiting. Following LTT and there various NAS deployments and there's been no mention of SAN, why? The San seems to be have higher security features and having it's own "network" WAY higher speed and scalability. And of course the owners want High security and low or no cost equipment and deployment. My input has been trying to be proactive with security and having high speed scalable storage capacity. So, any IT SAN experience out there that care to comment about how it's worked out for them? What kind of configuration did you use?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, bjr23 said:

Following LTT and there various NAS deployments and there's been no mention of SAN, why?

Doesn't really fit their audience. Normally much more complex to setup and expensive. And with all the new features like smb direct, there is less of a reason to do so.

3 minutes ago, bjr23 said:

ith is considering a new San using the Fibre Channel storage system/structure

Fibre channel seems to be on its way out, and ethernet with rdma + iscsi seems to be the more popular way of doing san stuff these days

 

What is accessing your SAN? How much storage and IOPS do you need? Do you have security requirements you need to meet?

 

[akio123008]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ethernet with rdma + iscsi

Worth mentioning that this ethernet may as well be fibre optics based.

[NelizMastr]

4 hours ago, akio123008 said:

Worth mentioning that this ethernet may as well be fibre optics based.

You mean actual ethernet or FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)? Sounds like it's more likely to be SFPs/QSFPs with fibre cables.

[Lurick]

4 hours ago, akio123008 said:

Worth mentioning that this ethernet may as well be fibre optics based.

 

26 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

You mean actual ethernet or FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)? Sounds like it's more likely to be SFPs/QSFPs with fibre cables.

Ethernet is part of the frame that carries data, not the physical medium. Fiber, copper, wireless, all carry ethernet it's just transmitted over the medium differently.

People commonly call catX 8p8c copper cables "ethernet" but that's not exactly correct. Additionally FCoE is fibre channel frames over ethernet based mediums which can be copper as well.

[akio123008]

43 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

You mean actual ethernet or FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)?

I mean running an ethernet-based alternative to FC (like iSCSI) over a fibre-optic cable.

 

Basically I wanted to point out that not using FC doesn't mean you can't use fibre; ethernet can be over fibre as well (as clarified by @Lurick)

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, akio123008 said:

I mean running an ethernet-based alternative to FC (like iSCSI) over a fibre-optic cable.

 

Basically I wanted to point out that not using FC doesn't mean you can't use fibre; ethernet can be over fibre as well (as clarified by @Lurick)

Thanks for that clarity too, I was thinking you might have said fiber and "ethernet" were different upon first read but checking now I see what you meant