Is a SAN right for me?

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Rob,

To take your fibre channel RAIDs and set them up as a SAN you will need to add a few components.

1. Fibre Channel HBA’s for each workstation you plan to connect. You can likely use the HBA that is in your server for one of your worksations, outside of that you’ll likely need to buy a couple of Atto Celerity cards.
2. A fibre channel switch. Qlogic 3000 series is a good choice for smaller workgroups, Qlgoic is what pretty much everyone uses in this industry.
3. SAN management software. You have 3 basic choices:
– Xsan: Requires you to repurpose your server as a metadata server and you must have GigE running to each workstation. If you’ve never set this up you will need to hire someone to set it up for you. However the software is included in the MacOS for free.
– MetaSAN: Similar to Xsan, maybe a touch easier to set up and better supported by Tiger however you need to purchase this software.
– SANmp: Far easier to set up and far easier to support, however, you will not be able to have just one volume that everyone reads/writes to, you will need to set up a few volumes and each volume can have 1 person writing at the same time. Again, there is a cost on the software, however, it’s likely the only option you wouldn’t need to hire a pro to come in and set up for you.

As far as other options or suggestions, my company makes Platform; which does allow you to connect fibre channel RAIDs and use them in your storage pools. If you’re interested in looking at that option reach out to me.

Good luck!

Nate Cooper
https://www.promax.com/platform
nate.cooper@promax.com

[Rob Wilson]

Hi Nate,

Thanks for getting back to me and for you help.
It seems like a fair bit of extra hardware/software… money.
Currently my RAIDs just run via fibre-channel into my server and then the rest of the network is gigabit ethernet. So I’m hopeful I may not need 1 and 2 from your list? In this case I would just need SAN management software? If I was to use MetaSAN or MetaLAN would I also be needing to buy the client software for each mac?

thanks again
ROb

[David Gagne]

If you are AFP sharing over ethernet, that is NAS not SAN. You are correct that NAS does not need the extra HBAs and you have everything you need right now.

The advantage of SAN, however, is that you remove the bottleneck of your server. Each client accesses the storage as if it owns the disk, and talks to the storage directly via fiber channel. Hence the need for HBA cards and fibre channel switch. It also requires 2 metadata controllers (servers) and software. Metadata controllers manage the san but the traffic does not flow through them. XSAN is free, so all you’d need is two mac minis with thunderbolt to fibre adapters for the controllers.

If all you want is “both drives merged” but not actually gaining any performance increases, I’d probably recommend taking a look at cluStore. It combines the drive in a virtual manner to make it feel like one drive even though it’s two separate drives. It provides no real benefit besides the logical organization of your files.

[Bob Zelin]

according to your first post you have
a server
two RAID arrays hooked up to fibre cards (are they in the server ?)

David is correct.

all you need is a multiport ethernet card, and someone to help you. You don’t need any software.

you can google my name to find me.

Bob Zelin

[Rob Wilson]

CluStore looks great, think this may be what I am after.
At the moment we’re not experiencing any issues with bandwidth – which from your great description would suggest that at this time the ‘full on SAN’ is maybe not for me…yet.

Bob, yes our server is a mac pro with 2 fibrechannel cards.
Would I need the multiport ethernet card, if I was just to use Clustore? would this just help with bandwidth?

Thanks to you all for your assistance, such a blessing to have people to help me understand!

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Rob Wilson] “I would love to have a new setup where we just mounted one drive that included ‘both drives merged’ and then as the RAIDs fill I would like the ability to add new RAIDs to increase ‘free space’. Am I correct in thinking this is how a SAN works?”

Nothing to do with SAN per se. Spanning volumes is more of a storage space management function (not SAN, NAS, etc.), and is usually a function of a RAID controller or the OS.

So why not just span the volumes in the OS, into one storage space?

(look for “To create a spanned volume in OS X” here or in many other places)

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[David Gagne]

Yeah a multiport ethernet card would just be for adding ports for more clients (I take it you use wireless for internet and the two gig ports for afp?).

[Matt Geier]

Rob,

What did you end up doing with this? I’m curious to know where you came out with a decision. What rabbit hole did you go down?

How did that work out?

Let us know..I’m sure the forum readers would like an update.
I know I would.

If you’re still in the market or want some suggestions.
I have a few things that may help depending on where your bottlenecks are.

Just wondering where things are at on this subject you posted about.

Regards,

Matt Geier
651-808-1338
(Creative Product Evangelist)
(Technical Sales Consultant)
(Video Networking Solutions Consultant)
(Creative Design Workflow Consultant)
(Social Media Networks Consultant)