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Cross-Platform Company Storage Architecture?
Eric^2 asks: "My company is preparing to implement a major network storage upgrade, and I'd like to get some ideas from Slashdot about what devices should be considered, and hopefully some experiences with some of the offerings that are available. What types of storage are you using and what would you recommend?"
"We are currently using approximately 2TB of storage space, and will need to expand to over 10TB in the next two to three years. We have a mix of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux clients and servers. All of our authentication is presently done through an Active Directory. If possible, we would like to centralize all of the storage into a single namespace, such as OpenAFS or DFS. Anything we purchase will have to be under maintenance contract for hardware such as failed drives or controllers. Ideally, whatever system we choose would allow us to purchase both high-speed SCSI spindles for our transactional needs and lower-speed SATA high capacity drives for our archival storage needs."
You need to see how you want to access your storage, and what is going to be running on it, as to how you go:-
SAN - block level data access to storage. Good for databases; low client counts (because SAN ports are expensive relative to ethernet) - but with high IO demands. EMC are good, but pricey - a low to mid end Clariion would probably be the right range to aim at.
NAS - file level data access to storage. Good for situations where there are many clients connecting, and their IO demands are not excessive. Netapps filers are very good at this (if youy can find information on their new OS (10GX) then it's VERY interesting. ILM use them in their render farms.
iSCSI - a blend of the best of both, but it's still looked upon as an emerging technology. You get (or did) free iSCSI licenses with netapps filers.
O'Reilly have a good book on this. "Using SAN's and NAS" which is vendor agnostic http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sansnas/index.html