RE: More DASD

Good point, Lukas.  Karl, you should be looking at the 5 (or more) year
TCO before investing in the NAS (or any technology).  It may be cheaper
than i5 DASD up front, but when you add in another backup method and
additional media, additional required staff/admin knowledge, changes to
your DR procedures and environment, etc. I wonder if it's truly an
effective solution compared to adding 2 mirrored 300GB 10K disks to your
i5 as a secondary ASP (or iASP; whatever) and using all of the
procedures you use today.

Now, a NAS may still be a better fit as you could use it for other
things, so your TCO formula can get complicated.  For instance, you
could do your daily i5 saves to SAVFs or maybe virtual tape and move
them to the NAS and back up the NAS.  Ditto any other servers - back up
to the NAS and go to tape from there.  Basically a disk-to-disk-to-tape
without special hardware.  Or use the NAS as the primary storage for
your other servers.

Or, if you add an 0595 to your i5 config you could also add an IxS for
not much more and get an integrated Windows or Linux server.  While the
IxS hardware isn't cheaper than an entry Windows box, it has no hardware
maintenance cost and is generally very cheap to admin since most things
are handled on the i5/OS side.

Is your existing system full of cards to the point that you'll need
another frame anyway to add the NAS connection?  You don't want the NAS
traffic on the same Ethernet (if using Ethernet vs. Fibre or iSCSI) port
you use for user connections.

It can be hard to figure out, especially if you don't know what your
admin costs will be for the NAS.

Does performance matter?  While the NAS can be speedy, the 27xx RAID
cards have that huge cache.  NAS will be limited by interface speed (Gb
Ethernet, iSCSI, Fibre), RAID card cache & speed (some low-end cards are
rather slow at RAID5 calculations), and type of drive used (7200 RPM is
common vs. the i5's 10K minimum disk speed).

What level of downtime is acceptable?  Does your network have open ports
for the NAS to use or do you need to buy more?  Is your equipment rack
full?  What's the extra cost of off-siting NAS backups in addition to
your i5?  Do you control your DR environment -- what's your cost to
build & maintain NAS vs. internal DASD in your DR environment?

i5 DASD:
Capital:
 0595 chassis if needed (+ associated things like HSL cables)
 27xx RAID card if needed
 2 300GB 10K SCSI disks (configure as mirrored) (if you need more than
300GB, do 4+ 300GB disks and go RAID5 so you can expand the array disk
by disk as needs grow)
 Additional capacity on DR system to hold the data - hardware config
basically doesn't matter
Operating:
 Additional power + HVAC
 0595 chassis maintenance

NAS:
Capital:
 NAS device
 Backup device
 Fibre, iSCSI, or Gb Ethernet card for i5
 Staff training on NAS admin/support (optional but recommended; may be
operating vs. capital especially if 'training' is merely RTFM)
 Replicate NAS (or equivalent capabilities) in DR environment
Operating:
 Additional power + HVAC
 NAS device maintenance
 Backup device maintenance
 Additional tapes
 Administration expense (staff time needed to admin/troubleshoot the NAS
& connectivity issues, additional backups to oversee, more in-depth
checking of updates from IBM & the NAS vendor to ensure updates won't
break the config, etc.)
 Documentation updates: procedures, BC/DR, etc.  Don't forget to test!

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 4:55 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: More DASD

You only do backups quarterly?

Consider buying a multi-drive ultrium 3 library, and do nightly saves.

Storage in the System is one of the most expensive things. If money is
an issue, you won't be able to get a clean and integrated solution for
your system i. Accessing storage via QNTC seems like a hack to me.

QNTC uses normal Windows SMB shares, almost all el-cheapo NAS boxes
support this. But you would then need a separate backup solution for
your NAS boxes, which isn't a nice approach.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Karl Lauritzen Jr.
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 11:05 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: More DASD

I searched archive and can only find 2-3 year old references that some
seem to not apply anymore.  We need disk for images. We use about 7-10GB
per week of images. Iseries expansion units very expensive and overkill
for this only. My image system will support image son optical or
external dasd as long as it can be seen by QNTC. I can now see shares on
some of my XP and MS exchange via QNTC. My BP is quoting me Netapp or
IBM DS400.   
 
Here is my problem we are clueless on how to hook this up, does it work
and backup of TB of data. Right now we back up quarterly to tape and
archive tapes. Got stacks of them already. 
 
I see the low end shark drives are dead but where do I start? And does
any network appliance work via QNTC? 
 
Karl Lauritzen Jr.
National Lloyds

Waco Texas 

254-717-6960

 

 

 
 
 
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