SAN/NAS Clarification

Hello Everyone,

I have some doubts with NAS, I work as a system administrator for a few years now and i haven't practically implemented SAN/NAS setup with iscsi or FC hence i'm here to seek help on NAS part, do NAS devices come with management portal with setting up for iscsi LUN's and are the cables used between NAS device and switch/server is a normal Ethernet Cable or it will be a different cable?

Regards,

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Comments

pram

It just depends on the hardware. Most filers can serve NFS/iSCSI/CIFS. Some of them have a NIC, HBA, Infiniband, etc etc.

kj0

SANs work on FibreChannel, FibreChannelOverEthernet, and iSCSI (essentially ethernet) which use block storage. Where as NFS is just file storage. NAS are generally ethernet, but you can get FAS as well, utilising fibre.

They can have the benefits depending on which way you do, but in most cases, SAN is the better option, NAS are great for holding and running your iSOs from.

jibbajabba

To complicate things, a SAN is technically not a device / an appliance, but the actual network - or Storage Area Network

So basically you can connect NASes through SANs *hides*

kj0

jibbajabba wrote: »

*hides*

..where did he go?!?

However, If you have a NAS, it "should" have a volume option for iSCSI so you can create a block storage with a LUN. We use this setup at work currently as we have a NAS in one of the buildings that requires a bit more throughput (Using local Switching) however, we need to use ACLs for the different user types. The NAS has an iSCSI target set up, then a Windows server has a software Initiator on it with ACLs attached to the folders.

It was a quicker and easier setup than mucking around with NFS.

Then you can get into the arguments over Load Balancing/etc.

QHalo

It was only easier because you were dealing with Windows, which has poor NFS support at best.

OP - your confusion probably stems from the fact that you may have seen fiber connections used in relation to IP-based storage protocols like iSCSI and NFS. So the answer is, they can use normal ethernet cables or even use fiber optics when used with a converged network adapter.

it_consultant

jibbajabba wrote: »

To complicate things, a SAN is technically not a device / an appliance, but the actual network - or Storage Area Network

So basically you can connect NASes through SANs *hides*

Your right, you have a Storage Array which you connect to with a variety of protocols. The traditional definition of arrays running on SANs is that the SAN will present a block level disk which emulates SCSI commands, either over iSCSI, FC, or FCOE/FCIP. Technically NFS and SMB v3 do not do this so even though they are presenting block level storage, they are not REALLY what one would refer to as a SAN array.

Some things wear both hats. Our Hitachi AMS 2100 with a Blue Arc NAS can do iSCSI AND NFS/SMB/CIFS. The new big-a$$ EMC VMAX 10K we are buying is primarily block level FC but supports CIFs and NFS as well.

jibbajabba

A lot of the big player nowadays support all protocols, sometimes its just a matter of licensing (NetApp) or a matter of getting different modules (Hitachi).

it_consultant

I always like NetApp for that, before all the players started doing it, NetApp was able to natively do SMB while our Hitachi AMS could ONLY be block unless you bought the blue arc appliance and dedicated an AMS array to it. The EMC isilon can do it but their tier one storage (VMAX) only just started offering the SMB without needing the file mover appliance.

QHalo

Its why I love NetApp as well. Mine is doing it all. NFS/iSCSI/CIFS pretty well too.

it_consultant

phoeneous wrote: »

How much did that set you guys back? Half a mil or so right?

Embarrassingly more. With the 2 VNX SANs we also purchased the deal came in at 2.35 million. What do you expect when a 400GB flash drive costs $16000 a unit and you want a lot of them.

Ssuperdoc

Thank you all for helping me to understand, really appreciate it!

Ssuperdoc

Since a couple of weeks i have found love towards SAN administration along with Visualization vmware.

I have been doing self study and understanding most of the theoretical knowledge and relating to hands on through videos and images found on internet about SAN, I'm trying to move to SAN now, my background is i have been into hardware/networking, windows administration, sql administration, IIS, Microsoft Azure and lastly Office365. As you can see the vast variety of roles i played but now I want to sit on something so i can expertise on it. I see that SAN's are linked mostly with Linux configuration and i have no knowledge on linux so is it necessary to learn linux or know only the parts of linux to perform the required setups if vendors like NetApp, Brocade, Vmware are hosting on it.

Regards,