XSAN to MetaSAN

[Bob Zelin]

Max,
you are nuts. Out of your mind.
You have a working XSAN system. You have a RED project coming in. And all you are worried about is saving money.

STOP IT. These systems all have issues – everything from XSAN to MetaSAN to everything else on the market. If you have a stable system, buy a larger QLogic switch, and any fibre channel array (they are all the same commodity items), and go back to work. Stop worrying about saving money. All you are worried about is “opening up ports on my QLogic fibre switch”. You will open up a pandoras box can of worms. If everything is working, just buy a larger switch, and add more storage, and be done with it. Active Storage, and others (Fibernetics, Dulce, and countless others) make fibre arrays that will work just fine. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you have a stable working system.

If your family memebers are dying and you need the money for their healthcare, just remember – your shared storage environment is MORE IMPORTANT ! The show must go on.

Bob Zelin

[Max Kaiser]

Bob,
Thanks for the post – you’ve kept me out of trouble before!

I guess I really just need to do some more research on expanding my existing XSAN network. I knew I could add a promise drive, but I thought I was stuck there. Sounds like I might be able to add any kind of fibre channel outputting raid to my existing system without adding another metadata controller, etc. I actually just clicked on Dulce’s site here and they have some sort of fibre channel transformer that would allow me to use one of these JBODs on my network – that sounds intriguing. It is 4gb and I only have a 2gb network, but maybe that is cool.

I’m also not to learned on expanding my switch. I’m hoping I can just bridge my 10 seat together with another 10 seat or something like that – I’ll mosey over to the XSAN forum for that info.

Mostly, I’m concerned about my future with XSAN. I get the feeling Apple has sort of left the building on this stuff. I can’t upgrade to XSAN 2.0 for any less than moving to MetaSAN, so I can’t upgrade my server to Leopard (XSAN 1.4 only works on Tiger) which kind of stinks. I’m not the type that likes to get too far behind in upgrades because pretty soon you’re dusted. Apple hasn’t made it that tasty to stick with them. MetaSAN just seemed a little more in my league.

As far doing stuff as cost effectively as possible, although I agree with you in spirit on spending whatever it takes, in truth we cobbled together our entire XSAN off of EBAY – seats, cables, transceivers – everything for about 1/8th the cost of doing it new. We figured it all out on our own, even when we were told repeatedly “you’ll just screw it up”. The RED is so ridiculously cheap for what it affords that I couldn’t say no – anyhow, what I’m trying to say is we’re always stretching way beyond what our tiny little town can pay us just because we love this stuff so much.

Anyhow, that all said, I think you know a lot more than me on this, and are essentially saying there are better ways – I will go forth and investigate further how to: expand my switch easily, and add much faster drives than my 5.6TB XRAID.

Thanks again for your info here, and all of your other great posts I’ve enjoyed whilst researching this!

Sincerely,
Max

Max Kaiser
Director
Hand Crank Films
http://www.handcrankfilms.com

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