Recommedations for new SAN?

[hotwired007]

I'm looking at getting a new SAN for my Proxmox cluster as the readynas 2100 we are currently using it reaching its maximum capacity and the lack of dual PSUs is becoming an issue with removing SPOF.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a decent SAN, potentially with or without 10GB NICs.

 

[adoII]

I would recommend to go with legacy hardware and nexenta SAN software.
Nexenta has a free community edition at no license cost for up to 18 TB.
As Nexenta uses zfs you will have great performance and zillions of modern SAN-Features at a fraction of a price of a proprietary SAN Hardware.

Nexenta is at nexenta.com, there is also another and cheaper webinterface for zfs at napp-it.org

 

[mir]

I would recommend to go with legacy hardware and nexenta SAN software.
Nexenta has a free community edition at no license cost for up to 18 TB.
As Nexenta uses zfs you will have great performance and zillions of modern SAN-Features at a fraction of a price of a proprietary SAN Hardware.

Nexenta is at nexenta.com, there is also another and cheaper webinterface for zfs at napp-it.org

What hardware is recommended for Nexenta?

 

[adoII]

What hardware is recommended for Nexenta?

(Nearly) Any Hardware, I always use Supermicro Servers.

There is a huge Compatibility List on Nexenta.com

 

[hotwired007]

I built a couple of homebrew nexenta servers a few years back when the limit was 2TB, its good but

Nexenta has a free community edition at no license cost for up to 18 TB.

Isnt quite true - AFAIK - its only free for non commercial and for testing.

http://www.nexentastor.org/projects/1/wiki/CommunityEdition

Production use is not allowed with Community edition. It is designed and intended to help people become familiar with the product or for hobbiest use.

 

[Jae Lee]

i'm also shopping around for SAN solution, and all my research seems to point out that, nexenta is really just opensolaris, with support.
i've never tried opensolaris, i thought they were just one of the linux distros out there, so this was a bit of a surprise to me.
anyone eve tried opensolaris? how much more difficult is it to setup than nexenta?

 

[Milkwyrm]

if you want to go the Solaris route, you could have a look at OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana with napp-it. http://www.napp-it.org/index_en.html

 

[Jae Lee]

if you want to go the Solaris route, you could have a look at OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana with napp-it. http://www.napp-it.org/index_en.html

i checked out napp-it. is napp-it something you install on top of a running solaris? or is napp-it an all-in-one distro w/ everything installed, kind of like proxmox?

 

[Milkwyrm]

On the page linked in that URL.

Setup your appliance with all these services and tools

• Step 1: Install NexentaCore, OpenIndiana or Solaris Express 11 (from Boot-CD on real Hardware or virtualized on a
  vti-d capable esxi Virtual Server to passthrough SAS-controllers and disks to NexentaCore to have full ZFS disk-control)
• Step 2: Login as root (or adminin and su) and enter:
  wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit | perl
• Step 3: Its like a well known ad: - there is no step 3 -Your NAS is ready

 

[Jae Lee]

On the page linked in that URL.

Setup your appliance with all these services and tools

• Step 1: Install NexentaCore, OpenIndiana or Solaris Express 11 (from Boot-CD on real Hardware or virtualized on a
  vti-d capable esxi Virtual Server to passthrough SAS-controllers and disks to NexentaCore to have full ZFS disk-control)
• Step 2: Login as root (or adminin and su) and enter:
  wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit | perl
• Step 3: Its like a well known ad: - there is no step 3 -Your NAS is ready

Thanks milkwerm, that was very helpful. But one more question, if I were to run this off virtualization, can this run off of proxmox or xenserver? or does it have to be on VMWare only?

 

[snowman66]

You can install it on dedicated hardware.

Here is video how to install napp-it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li1Y9nI9v2g
and basic configuration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u70MlGpQTRM&feature=plcp

 

[hotwired007]

I'm currently looking at the offereings from Netgear/QNAP/Dell rather than building my own variant of a SAN - i plan on doing some research into Ceph/Sheepdog/GlusterFS once we're up and running with a more stable SAN.

 

[Tuxxin]

We're using OSNexus ontop of SuperMicro hardware. We are very pleased with the performance, features and ease of use with OSNexus. They have some great features coming in Q1 of 2013 as well.

 

[Jae Lee]

You can install it on dedicated hardware.

Here is video how to install napp-it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li1Y9nI9v2g
and basic configuration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u70MlGpQTRM&feature=plcp

can it also be installed inside openvz/kvm?

 

[snowman66]

can it also be installed inside openvz/kvm?

Why would you need this?

 

[Jae Lee]

Why would you need this?

I like to have all my servers virtualized for variety of reasons, such as backups, portability, cloning, revert/snapshots, etc ...
Why, are there any known problems for running SAN under virtualization?

 

[udo]

I like to have all my servers virtualized for variety of reasons, such as backups, portability, cloning, revert/snapshots, etc ...
Why, are there any known problems for running SAN under virtualization?

Hi,
not directly problems, but for a SAN you want the full speed and with virtualisation you have an IO (disk/net) loss.

BTW, with openvz your guest use the same kernel like the host - openindiana or opensolaris use an own kernel and must run as kvm.

Udo