Thursday
Jan212010
Episode 74: SAN Essentials Part II
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 10:58PM In the exciting conclusion we look at creating some disks on a real life SAN, I told you it was exciting, it did involve 56 disks you know. Anyway, we then go on to present them to some machines, chat about NIC teaming and some general iSCSI advice. Right, you are now a storage consultant, how hard can it be?
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Reader Comments (10)
Very interesting thanks i have never really had the chance until now to see HP strageworks. Would there be any chance of a few pics or video of the hardware to accompany this video tutorial?
Good vid thanks.
Stupid question but is it worth installing fibre in a home network? Where a lot of large files are moved back and forth between a NAS box and Windows 7. Or will Windows 7 still have it's slow transfer speeds issue? Is it worth replacing CAT 5e cable with CAT6?
Quick answer to your fibre question. No. The physical media type has little to do with the the speed of the data going through it. This more to do with the devices connected to it. Also what type of fibre would you go for there are several standards of fibre alone. Fibre in the home is a waste of time. Even SAN manufacturers are stopping the production of fibre cables between disk shelves and going for SAS. Maybe this is a topic for a future episode.
Thanks for the reply :)
Also i think its worth a mentioning how useful fibre is over copper between buildings.
I don't know if you can get it for networking, however, there is low graded cheap plastic fibre which is useful for experimentation. But no i wouldn't use it in a home production environment mega overkill.
At college i used plastic fibre with microcontrollers that collected sensor data through a simple interface, modulated the signal and sent it down this cheap fibre. I love experimenting with stuff.
Out of interest Intel also has "Light Peak" a consumer based fibre optic USB interface in its labs, you could see 100-gigabit USB 3F as a standard.
Very interesting, looking forward to more SAN and HP EVA commnad view demos.
I am interested in storage any certification advise?
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Fiber at home will be an over kill.Although not impossible you will need to use media converters to be able to connect to RJ45 interface. CAT 6 E should get you the optimal throughput for any home network. Wireless n will get you good throughput without cables.
supernova of-course fiber can be used for networking that's how ISPs link together across continents using under sea fiber cables. Some ISPs like virgin use copper for last mile connectivity and fiber as backbone.
You may choose to run fiber between buildings but make sure you can afford a splice machine and either interface module in your switch or media converter.
For inter-building networks you can build a reliable and solid radio access point using microtik router OS and their router board equipment.
Among all available wire media fiber has the lowest latency, i.e, it is the fastest medium. SAS is slower than FC but cost effective. More on SAS vs FC
http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center/insider-compares-sas-fibre-channel.php?type=article
@Anjaan eer I know its used in networking! i didnt say it couldn't!
In fact if you read my post i state it is used instead of copper when networking between building because of its properties. Although copper does have one or two newer technologies such as VDSL to overcome some of the issues.
I was asking if the cheaper plastic grade fibre can for networking rather than expensive glass grade.
Apologies Supernova, I was too quick to interpret your post. from this link http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlinecatalog/displayproduct.cfm?productID=1352 it seems plastic grade may be usable for networking but with higher latencies, from the specs they seem a cheaper option for Video / Voice Signals over long distances are required.