January 10, 2003 at 6:39 am
We are having a dilemna of ideas here where I work. We currently have almost all of our SQL Server data residing on a Network Appliances Filer (This is simply one brand of network-attached storage.).
Because of some issues we have had with performance and the fact that every time the NAS device is brought down, or rebooted, (for maintenance, problems, etc.) each SQL Server must have it's service restarted in order to re-gain a connection to its data.
I believe that moving the data off the NAS and onto local storage will provide a performance boost and it will obviously solve our problem when the NAS is brought down.
If anyone has any experience dealing with SQL data on an NAS device, and especially if you have gone to, or from, that versus local storage, please give me your opinions based on your results. We want to do what is best but I have got to be able to prove to management that whatever route we end up taking, it is the best route.
Thanks in advance.
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January 10, 2003 at 10:59 am
Haven't used a NAS, though we have some on a SAN. Similar concept, slightly different architecture. The idea behind this is that the storage is consolidated and rarely, if ever, goes down. If you have uptime issues, I'd move it, or dedicate a NAS to the SQL stuff.
Steve Jones
March 24, 2003 at 3:14 pm
We recently purchased two NetApp filers. A 940 with 4 TB and a R100 with 12 TB. We purchased the 940 to consolidate some of our SQL Servers and allow for dynamic growth as our business expands. The R100 is to be used as a storage repository for image documents and as a location for backups for quick restores if necessary.
All of the storage is on a separate subnet over Gig Ethernet. We looked at SAN solutions from EMC, Xiotech, HP, and StorageTek, but the cost to invest in Fibre Channel was a little steep when we already had an existing Gig framework. NetApp was attractive to us b/c we could leverage that infrastructure.
The theory behind the NetApp filers was intriguing but to be honest we haven't seen anything spectacular. In fact, our 10 disk Raid 5 setup leaves the NetApp box in the dust, and I won't even compare it with our Raid 10 setup! We've had numerous specialists from NetApp come out to look at our configuration but they can't figure out why our DAS smokes them. This is our current configuration:
HP DL380 G3 server (2x 2.4 GHz, 6 GB RAM)
Windows 2K Advanced Server
SQL 2000 Enterprise Edition
Intel Pro/1000 T NIC (one for storage, one for broadcast)
Adrian Porter
Adrian Porter
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