June 17, 2010 at 5:24 pm
We are currently entertaining the idea of moving our production DBs (OLTP) to a Network Appliance iSCSI "SAN".
I am vehemently opposed to this, but the vendor is doing a very good job of selling it as a viable solution.
I understand that the best practice is to use Fiber attachments and to use RAID 1+0, etc etc etc
My Question is this......
Does anyone here have experience with using a NetApp iSCSI SAN in production (in an oltp environment) and can you provide specific info on how it's working out?
I guess experience with ANY Vendors iSCSI SAN solution would provide decent info......
Thanks
Greg Jackson
Gregory A Jackson MBA
Gregory A Jackson MBA, CSM
June 18, 2010 at 9:09 am
How do the specs line up for this new proposed solution? Number of IOPs it's capable of? Number of spindles?
This all needs to be addressed and it needs to address your needs. Watch closely how they're selling it to management. You care about spindles and disk queue lengths, right, not capacity (although you obviously need to have enough disk space to store and grow). So the vendor needs to prove to you that the IOPs and disk latency aren't going to be an issue the intended solution.
We've used a lot of things in the past and still have a good mix of disk solutions around (SAN, DAS, Internal Storage, and one iSCSI solution) and the iSCSI solution is the least favorite of mine. We eventually got the SQL data moved off that solution and onto a SAN, and used that iSCSI solution as document storage (which I think it's better suited to 😉 ). But again, on a fiber connection, you can run that way w/o problems if disk latency is not an issue.
Doubt that helps you much with hard numbers for mgmt, and was kind of flip-floppy, but really comes down to whether or not the I/Os are going to be fast enough for your app or not, regardless of the storage solution.
-Patrick
June 18, 2010 at 9:14 am
yeah Patrick. Thanks for the post.
I think you and I are definately on the same page......
I've had the same experience as you in the past.
The vendor keeps saying "Well....new technologies have really improved these issues."
I aint buyin it.
GAJ
Gregory A Jackson MBA, CSM
June 18, 2010 at 9:17 am
NP, good luck and keep fighting the good fight! 😀
June 19, 2010 at 8:29 am
GregoryAJackson (6/17/2010)
I am vehemently opposed to this, but the vendor is doing a very good job of selling it as a viable solution.
I understand that the best practice is to use Fiber attachments and to use RAID 1+0, etc etc etc
My Question is this......
Does anyone here have experience with using a NetApp iSCSI SAN in production (in an oltp environment) and can you provide specific info on how it's working out?
I guess experience with ANY Vendors iSCSI SAN solution would provide decent info......
Thanks
Greg Jackson
Gregory A Jackson MBA
http://www.JaxonsGottaGun.com[/quote%5D
which NetApp appliance are you thinking of purchasing
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
June 21, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I Believe its the FAS3070 iSCSI SAN
Gregory A Jackson MBA, CSM
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