I would not say no extra hardware, you do need a dedicated NIC. It
should be at least 1GB. The rest is true but even at 1GB you will see
slower access than dedicated SCSI 320 on a good raid controller. So you
want to expand your file server, print server, image storage, backup to
disk, and other non DB applications, this is a good solution. SAN vs.
DAS is great for when you need lots of storage and to grow it year after
year but do not really need CPU upgrades. It also makes central backup
faster and easier. As far as no need, well I have 3 AS400/iSeries
system. One in a remote data center, two in corporate. Two are
dedicated to our online Check Guarantee processing and the third is our
back office. The iSeries on a blade would be great for fault tolerance
and clustering the processor while having all the storage on one
redundant SAN. Need more horse power, add a blade.
For smaller shops, not worth the investment.
Chris Bipes
Director of I.S.
CrossCheck, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:14 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: SAN vs i5 disk was: Any thoughts on the PowerVM and
lx86announcement?
On Jan 30, 2008 2:23 PM, <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Are SAN's really any cheaper? I thought that as soon as you mentioned
SAN
Well, there ARE cheap low ends SANs for small and medium businesses
available. They usually use iSCSI with Software Initiators, so there's
no extra hardware required on the server side. They are a good
alternative to DAS in low-performance environments. It's better to use
seperate ethernet switches for the SAN traffic, but that is not
required. You can bring your own cabling, and you won't have to worry
much.
Don't expect wonders from iSCSI though. It's very good for running
nearline storage, backups, media archives etc. But a database over iSCSI
will make your face freeze off.
What does a SAN cost - ready to run?
An iSCSI SAN with a few disk drives can be had be starting at 5-10k US$.
But of course the JS22 Blade with i5/OS on it is very, very picky.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/os/i5os/v6r1/blades/pdf/supported_enviro
nments.pdf
It does not run in the BladeCenter S (the Small Business version of the
BladeCenter H).
It only supports assorted SAN attachments, and only to a few IBM choosen
SANs.
Namely: DS4700, DS4800, DS8100, DS8300.
As it is right now, i don't see much purpose for this device.
midrange.com
