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two simple SAN questions
Hi everyone,
Another newbie question so go easy on me.
We’re in the process of looking for new SAN management software after our current supplier let us down badly with their after sales support.
Our SAN is running volume level software, has ten clients linked by fibre cable through a Qlogic 5602 switch to a Infortrend RAID and all clients are running OSX 10.5.
Our SAN works pretty hard. As well as large video files it also has to handle the sort of data that it really isn’t meant for e.g. hundreds of sequenced images from rendering and animation packages like Maya.
Additionally, following the advice of our reseller, each user also uses their own volume as if it were an additional local drive that they can work from and render to.
Over the course of the last six months we’ve had a variety of problems mainly centered on the loss of write privileges to volumes and in some extreme cases the loss of large amounts of data during or following copying from volume to volume.
Having experienced these problems and having looked at the way that other facilities seem to be using SAN systems I’m wondering about two things.
Firstly, do all volume level SAN’s have the sort of permissions and data loss problems I mention above and should we expect this? Secondly, is it the case that our problems are as a direct result of the way that we use our SAN i.e. as a storage area where all ten clients treat their volume as being a local drive and work off it in a wide variety of applications?
Thanks
Bruce -
9 Replies
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oh, come on, what SAN software are you using !
Bob Zelin
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There are so many questions I don’t know where to start except for:
WHAT SAN SOFTWARE ARE YOU USING, WHAT PLATFORM, WHAT OS, WHAT FIBRE CARDS, WHAT NLE AND SO ON AND SO ON?
Dan
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Hi Bruce.
We can only speak for our own firm, CommandSoft Inc., when we say we have many thousands of happy clients that are running our FibreJet volume level SAN solutions with the very same hardware that you have described and without any mysterious losses of data or problems with write permissions.
Since the SAN hardware you have described is the most common hardware that we recommend, it would be pretty easy for us to provide an evaluation license for FibreJet if you would be interested in giving our product a try.
CommandSoft takes great pride in our post sales support efforts and we are confident that FibreJet would live up to your expectations for a reliable, high-performance volume level SAN management solution.
Feel free to contact us any time if you think we might be able to help.
Chuck McMakin
CommandSoft, Inc. /
Phone: (805)730-7772 /
Email: chuck@commandsoft.com -
Thanks for the reply Chuck.
I’d been waiting for somebody to respond without caps lock on.
I didn’t want to reveal the SAN software maker as the implication is that it’s their software causing the issues. Whilst that might be the case I don’t have the technical knowledge to say for sure. Seemed a bit unfair to point the finger at them even if their after sales care was rubbish.
I just wanted to make sure there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the way we used our SAN.
We’re about to start evaluating a couple of alternative products shortly so I may get in touch with you later this month.
Thanks
B -
Hello Bruce,
How long has the SAN been in use & has there been any volume maintenance (housekeeping) performed during this time? All SANs require some amount of housekeeping, this could be a potential cause for the flakiness you describe.
regards,
ryanRyan Stoutenborough
Studio Network Solutions
Phone: 877.537.2094 ext. 208
ryans@studionetworksolutions.com
http://www.studionetworksolutions.com -
Hi Ryan,
The SAN has been in use since around March of last year. Problems began to emerge around May/June. Each time I lost the write permissions on a volume I erased the volume in question. This solved the write permissions problems but they always reemerged elsewhere on other volumes after a period of time.
I suspect you’re right about general maintenance of the system. The only problem is that since I’m actually an animator and the job of being “the SAN guy” is mine because I’m the only person prepared to try and tackle it, I’m not sure what I should be doing to maintain the integrity of the system.
Are there maintenance tools or procedures you would suggest I try?
Thanks
BruceBTW You might be interested to know one of the replacement products we’re going to be testing over the next few weeks is SANmp.
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Bruce,
My apologizes for the cap lock being on. It’s hard to diagnose the issues you are having without knowing more about your system and how it’s configured.
Studio Network Solutions is good company to investigate and so is Apace Systems.
Good luck with your system and if I can be of any help, I will.
Dan
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Hi Bruce,
It’s hard to recommend any tools or procedures because I’m not familiar with what your SAN software will support. It sounds to me like you just need a good scrubbing. I would try erasing all of the volumes and not just the volume in question (be careful).
We recommend that users reinitialize their SAN volumes on a six to twelve month cycle. This helps maintain a reliable file system on the disk and keeps the SAN running at peak performance. Also, it is our experience that HFS+ drives exhibit irregular behavior when operated too close to maximum capacity. We recommend that users always maintain free space on each drive equal to at least 15% of that drive’s total formatted capacity (i.e. a 100GB volume should always have at least 15GB free).
Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
Regards,
ryan -
Hi Ryan/Dan,
Thanks for the advice and offers of help. Sorry for not getting back until now but I’ve been out of the studio for a few days.
We’re going to push ahead with evaluating SANmp and a couple of other solutions in the next few weeks.
Based on what we’ve discussed here I think the fact that the RAID is more or less left to fend for itself could easily be the source of many of our current problems. However I still think it’s worth the cost of shifting to another software supplier to get an after sales support team that’s actually willing to talk to us.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again
Bruce
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