INetU Managed Hosting is pleased to announce our new Shared SAN Storage solution!
INetU currently supports a variety of SAN, DAS and NAS solutions to meet each client’s needs. We consult with you in the pre-sales process to select the right storage device, whether that is an EMC SAN, a Net App SAN, a Dell MD3200 or something else. We have introduced a new option for clients who want to get started with database clustering, but do not have the budget for their own dedicated SAN, NAS or DAS: Shared SAN Storage. Clients are able to get dedicated LUNs on our high performing multi-tenant EMC SAN at an affordable price, with storage plans customized to suit your project.
WHAT IS SAN?
Read the full post »
When you start looking to purchase Enterprise Storage, you realize quickly that large scale, high performance storage isn’t cheap. Most people experience sticker shock the first time they price out five or six terabytes of SAN storage. If a two terabyte hard drive costs less than two hundred dollars, why does a five terabyte SAN cost tens of thousands?
The answer is pretty complex:
Read the full post »
Recently INetU Labs put Dell’s low cost workgroup SAN through its paces to see how it compares to the more robust (and costly) Equallogic and EMC offerings. The results are in, and it seems that correctly configured, the MD3000i is great product with plenty of bang for your buck.
Configuration
For testing we used an MD3000i populated with a mix of 146GB SAS and 500GB SATA drives. The SAN shipped with a single controller but a second was added to test failover. A word of warning here – Dell configures the duplex mode based on how the SAN is ordered; if you add a second controller later you’ll need to use the command line tool to enable it, a process that’s not stated as a clear requirement and takes a little digging on the Internet to find documentation for. That being said, once you find the docs you’ll have it set in no time. Our test unit was a major firmware revision behind, and bringing it up to date took a good twenty minutes. Minor revision updates probably won’t take as long, but this is something to keep in mind if you’re striving for multiple nines of availability.
Once the hardware was configured and updated, the software install was a snap. The management software is somewhat cumbersome but gets the job done, and configuring the LUNs is a simple process. We were testing multipath (MPIO), and Dell requires a specific version of the iSCSI initiator on Windows servers, so be careful here, too. Fortunately, the supplied driver CD made sure the right version was installed.
Benchmarking
Read the full post »
Shopped for storage lately? There’s a seemingly endless list of options, from full-blown enterprise level high-performance SAN/NAS units to big cheap disks in simple enclosures that connect directly to one computer via USB or eSATA and even cloud storage. How do you choose the right one for your storage needs?
When faced with this dilemma, I always ask myself these five questions:
- How many people need to access the data simultaneously?
- How large is the data?
- What is the impact of the data being lost or corrupted?
- How long do I need to keep the data?
- Where do I need to access the data from?
Read the full post »
