On Fri, 25 Jan 2013, Craig Cook wrote:
We have around 200TB of dev/QA storage that is across 3 SAN's. (EMC VMAX and
IBM XIV's)
Servers are AIX, Solaris and VMware.
We are looking to replace it with cheaper storage.
I would be interested in build-your-own-NAS solutions, but I am not sure what
to start looking at. (Netapp is too expensive)
Failing that, what does a cheap SAN look like?
We don't need SAN replication, or many fancy features.
I use 4U 60-bay SAS attached JBODs
(http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-products/6g-sas-jbod/dns-1660-4u-60-bay-6g-35inch-sassata-jbod.html)
attached to a 2U Supermicro head node. Each JBOD has a connection to two
LSI 9211-8i SAS2 HBAs and supports multi-pathing. It would be similar to
the diagram at:
http://www.dataonstorage.com/dataon-solutions/125-unified-storage-system.html
I am still using ZFS and Nexenta Core Platform for this (NexentaStor
without the GUI) but am planning on migrating to OmniOS. For higher
performance, I use an 80GB SLC Fusion-IO card with two partitions, ~10GB
for write cache and the rest for read cache. An alterantive option would
be a ZeusRAM SSD. This system is primarily used with NFS v3/v4 for large
scale genome sequencing against an HPC cluster (hundreds of millions of
files, anywhere from several kb to several gigs in size). If you need it
to function more like a traditional SAN, setup iSCSI over 10GbE or IB and
serve out LUNs.
The DIY route will be far, far cheaper than Netapp and Isilon at least in
terms of initial cost. If you're comfortable maintaining Solaris or a
derivative and ZFS on the command line, then skip something like
NexentaStor. If you want a supported appliance with the option of a GUI,
go with NexentaStor and one of their supported partners like Silicon
Mechanics, DataON, etc. One of the added benefits of the latter is the
value-add the vendors place on top of NexentaStor. DataON for instance
has their DSM management solution plug-in for NexentaStor that gives you
detailed monitoring, visualization of drive slots, etc.
-phillip
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