Hi Sean,

We would probably buy Dell stuff and according to their specifications
the iSCSI version of their SAN box only supports 2 servers. Their Fibre
channel one supports 8, though. So we were looking at Fibre Channel...
We want to buy 2 of the boxes and have them either mirror or just take
periodic snapshots. Right now we are either copying the data via nfs or
rsync over ssh through-out the network and it is starting to eat up a
lot of our bandwidth (we are also looking into just continuing our
current method of copying, but over a dedicated ethernet network). The
through-put is also important to us. Can 8 db servers really share one
SAN box and not overwhelm it?

We are still trying to work out the details (both technical and
budgetary), but I was hoping that maybe someone on this forum already
had one in place for their databases and could let me know if this thing
is going to work before I shell out the tens of thousands of dollars for
it. If it does work then it would be worth the cost for us.

Thanks,
Steve

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 12:16 -0400, Leyne, Sean wrote:

> Steve,
>
> > We are thinking about starting off with a 3 TB SAN from Dell and
> > attaching it to 8 of our servers, but I would love to hear if anyone
> > else is doing this and if so how it is going, any pitfalls to avoid,
> > etc.
>
> SANs are a pet subject of mine, I've been working on my business
> partner
> to get one for 2 years but he keeps resisting.
>
> Are you looking at Fibre Channel or iSCSI connects?
>
> Unless you are going to be using 10Gb network cards/switches, Fibre
> Channel is the only way to go (unfortunately). Firebird, like all
> databases, is I/O bound so transfer speed is critical. Fibre Channel
> is
> currently the only way to get the throughput.
>
>
> Are you looking to use volume mirroring/replication?
>
> You will need to test if mirrors of the Firebird databases are valid
> if
> the host dies. Most HBAs should act exactly like a normal hard drive
> controller, and provide the correct disk write order, but you will
> need
> to test to be sure.
>
>
> Sean
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Visit http://firebird.sourceforge.net and click the Resources item
> on the main (top) menu. Try Knowledgebase and FAQ links !
>
> Also search the knowledgebases at http://www.ibphoenix.com
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]