Practical Example of Implementing a SAN

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Practical Example of Implementing a SAN

• Douglas Lilly
• Senior Telecommunication Technologist
• Department of Technology and Information
• State of Delaware

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Storage Area Networks
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SANs Are not cheap to implement

• No matter if you are using high end, mid range,
  or smaller Storage arrays for a SAN
  implementation it is typically an expensive
  proposition.
• The disk enclosure (depending on capacity) can
  run into the millions.
• Typically the fibre channel components are
  separate (switches, cabling, HBAs, bridges)
• Data Center space and environmental
  considerations
• Can your data center handle the power and cooling
  requirements?

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Adds Complexity

• Typically uses some type of optical signaling
• Customer normally has less hands on hardware
  repair capabilities
• Performance monitoring (How are you going to do
  it)? Vendor supplied products? Must included both
  disk and fabric components
• Interoperability between vendors (Will a Cisco
  MDS switch work with a Brocade switch)?
• Improper Zoning or masking may inadvertently
  cause data corruption or at a minimum a host will
  not be able to see the storage

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Brings new Network Concepts

• Arbitrated Loop
• SAN Fabrics
• Fabric Zoning
• Host Bus Adapters
• iFCP (Internet Fiber Channel Protocol)
• iSCSI (Internet SCSI)
• VSANs
• FSPF

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Typical SAN Components

• HBA (Host Bus Adapters)
• Provide the interface between the host computers
  bus and the Fibre Channel
• Fabric Switches
• Provide 100/200/400 mps per port
• Support different port types (mode)
• E (fabric expansion port), F (fabric port), FL
  (fabric loop port)
• Disk Array
• EMC, Hitachi, HP, IBM

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Host Bus Adapters
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Switch showing port examples
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SAN Fabric with Multiple Vendor Switches
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The Disk Array

• We are currently using various EMC enclosures to
  include DMX2000, 8830, 8530 and 3830 models as
  well as Clarion arrays.

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Why Use SANs?
Clustering
Storage Consolidation
LAN free Backup
Disaster Recovery
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Clustering

• One of the main reasons the State of Delaware is
  using SAN technology is to leverage high
  availability via clustering
• We are using MSCS via Windows 2003 machines in an
  Active/Active/Passive and Active/Passive modes.
• Networked storage enables multiple servers to
  assume the tasks of a failed server

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Typical Exchange Cluster
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Cluster Disk Resources
Each node must be able to see the same set of
disks (must be able to own the resource
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SAN Storage for Clustering
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Zoning and Masking

• Zoning allows you to segregate devices
• Can be done on a port-by-port basis or via WWN
  (world wide name)
• LUN Masking is the capability that allows a
  specific LUN to be exclusively assigned and
  accessed by a specific list of host connections.

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Fabric View w/HBAs
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Things to remember
Vendor partners / acquire expertise
Clustering, Storage consolidation, LAN free backup
SANs can be expensive and complicated
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Windows/Exchange 2003

• Questions?