Re: iSeries and Sans

midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 10/27/2006 01:42:55 PM:

This is where LPAR fits so well. You can create a partition on the i 
that is just used for hosting disk for x and AIX/Linux partitions. Since 

that partition isn't used for development or web serving or Java or C or 

such things, the requirement that it gets the latest greatest PTFs is 
minimal. Routinely we see these partitions running for a year without 
PTFs.  Your dev partitions can be updated and IPLed without so much as a 

hickup on the hosting partition side.

That is all fine if you configure your box that way to begin with, but it 
is not easy to retrofit a box to this sort of setup.  Is there any kind of 
guidance or wisdom as to how much CPU and memory a partition like this 
needs?

Backup is a bit of an issue.  Moving a tape drive between partitions can 
work, but not something I'd want to rely on, so you probably need tape 
drives for each partition.  Of course you do for a SAN too, but there is 
no savings here.

Finally, what technology would the iSeries be using for the SAN feature? 
iSCSI?  How does that compare to the typical Fibre Channel-based SAN for 
performance and reliability?

Mark