[AusNOG] 10gbit iSCSI SAN's which support active sync across multiply enclosures

[Stephen Tyers]

Thinking out of the box here.

Another option is to use Solaris 11 as a iSCSI target (SAN). Use commodity servers running LSI RAID controllers with SSD caching. Solaris has great commercial support options and is easily configurable as a iSCSI target. Costs around $1000usd for each node for the OS.

They use ZFS which has replication and HA features built into the file system and has a greater capacity to deal with data replication errors that sometimes challenges typical SAN's (especially over WAN links).

I would recommend using OWC SSD's the enterprise Mercury pro series 100gb runs about $559usd each. (50,000iops per SSD and overall hot data gets served at 400% performance improvement over SAS 15k rpm alone)

You could use Intel's 10gbe without a switch as a direct connect (they do this by default and saves 100ns latency versus a switch and about $10,000 a switch. Also one less point of failure). Put a few NIC's in a 2u supermicro and you can direct connect 2 servers per NIC.

You could setup a decent configuration of about 8-16 TB for less than any other solution with fantastic performance. The great thing about Solaris 11 is that Oracle has tuned the file system for great performance so that it could accommodate Oracle 12 DB.

- Stephen Tyers


On 2012-05-13, at 6:54 PM, Oliver Sebastian wrote:
> +1 on the equallogic. Good value, great service and excellent product support and feature set improvement via firmware updates. We love ours
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 13/05/2012, at 10:54 PM, "Matthew Zobel" <matthew.zobel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> James,
>>           We use Equallogic PS series arrays with 10gbe and replicate SAN to SAN intra site. We also replicate inter site over 1gig, but there is no reason you couldn't do it over 10gbe layer 2 or 3 if you you have the link capacity.  It's a great setup with continuous asynchronous replication.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Matt
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> On 13/05/2012, at 9:23 PM, Adam Nock <Adam.Nock at amcom.com.au> wrote:
>> 
>>> Ive not had any experience with SAN's myself at a technical level, but I did attend a session with NetApp a few months back, and their software does have functionality for remote site synchronisation.
>>> 
>>> Quickly looked at their website, i THINK it was the MetroCluster system, but i might be wrong.
>>> 
>>> I remember liking that all their gear (bar the poor little SAN at the bottom of the heap) supported all the features they had on offer (via feature licensing of course).
>>> It might mean you can get the small size you want with good DR potential.
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> Adam
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of James Braunegg [james.braunegg at micron21.com]
>>> Sent: Sunday, 13 May 2012 2:53 PM
>>> To: ausnog at ausnog.net
>>> Cc: Micron21 - Support
>>> Subject: [AusNOG] 10gbit iSCSI SAN's which support active sync across multiply enclosures
>>> 
>>> Hey all sorry for the slightly off topic question, but I’m after some recommendations for a new 10gbit iSCSI SAN which supports which support active sync across multiply enclosures via fibre (So each enclosure can be stored in different physical locations)
>>> 
>>> I’m looking only for a 2RU to 3RU unit with about 4tb to 10tb of RAID 10 SAS storage.
>>> 
>>> Needs to support all the standard features ie two controllers / power supplies per enclosure and have enterprise 24/7 local support and lots of iSCSI targets etc.
>>> 
>>> Any recommendations (specific models / make ) would be great ! (Happy for a storage rep to reach to me out off list)
>>> 
>>> Kindest Regards
>>> 
>>> James Braunegg
>>> W:  1300 769 972  |  M:  0488 997 207 |  D:  (03) 9751 7616
>>> E:   james.braunegg at micron21.com<mailto:james.braunegg at micron21.com>  |  ABN:  12 109 977 666
>>> 
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