Storage Area Networks vs. Local RAID Arrays?

Noxx asks: "My department is purchasing several new servers for an intranet website project. We are under pressure to store our content on an existing Storage Area Network accessed over a fibre connection rather than on a local RAID-5 array, to cut purchasing costs on the new hardware. Have any Slashdot readers evaluated the pros and cons between the two storage technologies, and are there any points of concern we should address? How does performance compare between the two, and is this a proper use of the SAN? If multiple servers access the same content from the SAN, is the possibility of introducing a single point of failure (ie: the SAN crashes) a valid concern?"

Comments

Re:SAN is BAD..dont do it!

[Zurk]

Ive set up fiber channel SANs..and i have only one thing to say -- DONT DO IT!. EMC and other vendors might claim to set up SANs and get em up and running in a flash. in reality you spend an ungodly amount of cash to get the fiber hardware in, pay EMC and other vendors a huge amount to plug it all in and fire it up only to find that firmware needs to be reflashed because one EMC box has firmware problems and is at a different revision level than the other EMC box. once you get past the firmware nightmare (after paying EMC or any other SAN vendor a huge consulting fee per hour of course) you end up with a freaking unstable SAN nightmare which takes months to fix. unstable equipment, firmware bugs, login problems, you name it. use RAID5 -- its fast dependable and millions of companioes have used it without any problems. its also mature. i use ICP Vortex RAID-5 cards for low end boxes or Sun Storedge A5000 , A3500 or equivalent for midrange.
dont do SAN. at least not till it becomes mature.