SAN recommendations

[Sean Oneil]

I just learned all this myself (the hard way).

Volume Level = Only one client can have write-access at a time.
File Level = All clients can safely have read/write-access at the same time.

If multiple computers have write access to the same disk volume, it will cause data corruption without a proper SAN solution. Volume level solutions manage it so that only one machine has write access at a time. Someone has to administer this usually. File level solutions use a metadata controller to allow all machines write-access. XSan and MetaSAN are both file level. Xsan requires a dedicated server for this (plus reccomends a backup). But MetaSAN automatically assigns the metadata duties to any available client machine, eliminating the need for an additional server.

I just started using MetaSAN with an iSCSI solution from Open-E (server) and ATTO (software client). In case you don’t know, iSCSI uses ethernet instead of Fiber Channel. I went with my particular solution because it’s 100% scalable. For example, I can easily upgrade to 10GB ethernet when it’s available and cheap. It hasn’t gone as smoothly as I’d have liked, but as far as MetaSAN is concerned, it’s been great.

Studio Network Solutions offers a complete iSCSI SAN solution that’s supposed to be pretty solid. But it’s pricey and it’s volume-level sharing only.

Sean

[Graeme Nattress]

Here’s my MetaSAN article: https://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_metasan.html

I’ve been rather busy with the RED camera project, so not much time for forum posting these days, but I do read what’s going on.

Basically, MetaSAN is excellent, affordable, file level and I’d say prety much perfect for any small FCP shop. I don’t know how well it scales to big installs, but that’s only because I’ve got a really small SAN here and no need to expand it further.

I’d totally agree with Peter that a volume level SAN is NOT what you want. Quite frankly, I don’t know why colume level SANs are called SANs as they’re so different from true file level SANs in operation. They should be called VANs, for Volume area network.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP