October 20, 2009 at 5:43 pm
I'd like an idea of how many people out there use SANs or physical drives for their database servers?
Currently, where I'm at, it seems SANs are the de facto standard. I definitely understand their value but practically every database server I've seen is lacking in the IO department. In some cases, I'm surprised they are running at all. (Even the error log is complaining about long IO times.) Doesn't the SAN administrator get notices of some kind that such and such server is not getting enough "juice"?
Do most of you have servers that use SANs? Do you have some kind of access or "oversight" on these SANs or are you left at the mercy of the SAN admin? Are you satisfied with SANs? Would you prefer physical drives?
Thanks in advance for your replies!
October 21, 2009 at 4:29 am
Ah, yes. The great SAN debate.
SANs can be wonderful things. We use them in our environment because we have clustered servers. However, the IO issue is well known and we are at the mercy of our SAN admin because they won't give us info on how the SANs are configured. Apparently it is "not important for the DBAs to know this information."
This is an old fight. Configured correctly, SANs can be a great boon to your environment. But if you work at a large company, you might not have a choice but to deal with what you're given.
Kevin Kline at Quest Software just gave a great speech last week to the Jacksonville SQL Server group that addressed this very issue (along with others) and I know there are several articles on this site which address it too. Use SSC's search feature to look up SANs. You'll get plenty of hits. (Upper right hand corner next to "Home").
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