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The Global File System goes full circleThe Global File System goes full circlePosted Jul 1, 2004 14:09 UTC (Thu) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221)Parent article: The Global File System goes full circle does anyone know a good resource for learning about Fibre channel SAN and NAS configurations. I have one comming up in my future and would like to be a little more prepared than I am now without having to go through some highly overpriced training course. The whole area seems to be vailed in mystery to the average small shop.
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Fibre channel Posted Jul 2, 2004 0:08 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I think it's veiled in mystery to a small shop because it's immersed in high costs that are impenetrable for the small shop. Fibre channel hardware and software are generally thought of as being practical only for high end shops. Think hundreds or thousands of servers and disks.This is particularly true now that Ethernet SANs (ISCSI) are becoming more real. There are no fibre channel NAS (where NAS means file-level networking) systems. Not that there couldn't be; people just don't see the point when Ethernet NAS is doing the job. Sorry, I don't have an answer the actual question. But I do know that when people demonstrate the high cost of fibre channel, they include the "overpriced training courses" mentioned. They note that it's a lot cheaper to get Ethernet/IP expertise (free, really, since you need that anyway).
Fibre channel Posted Jul 2, 2004 19:41 UTC (Fri) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link] I don't really agree that the costs are impenetrable. You can get Dual raid chasies for 12K plus 14X$800 for a full set of disks. The controlers for each server are not too bad, and the switches are a couple of grand as well. So your looking at 30K for a 4 terabyte, high speed, redundant array. Even EMC is in this range. But add the required traning for DEll/EMC in order to buy it, and that's an additional 20K, and THAT'S not afforadable. It is true that 30k isn't cheap, but any time you need that much storage for High use systems like a web based image server (court documents in our case with 150K hits per day between 8am-5pm) you're going to spend a chunk of change, but almost half on traning is absurd.
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