We are Running the IBM Shark very successfully on Novell, Linux, Unix and Microsoft versions. Our Exchange box has been running beautifully without any hardware related issues. We use flash copy to enable complete backup of the database system without it being down for extended periods of time. We have encountered no problems with databases running on the SANS. To the server, its just a harddrive. why does it care where the harddrive is stored? It was going through a scsi controller to the harddrives and now it is going through a fiber channel. Our databases have not been negatively impacted. Odlly enough it has imporved our up time, since we have gotten off the old disk drives (and they were old!)
The SANS system does have some advantages. One of our older server's motherboard blew. We literally moved the Sans card and the nic to another server (which we had just gotten in as a replacement) and the system was up and running. Total down time - 2 hours, most of which was finding out that it was the motherboard. One of the nice features is that one of our Novell servers was running low on space and we just went in and added space. We are getting ready for clustering as well on both Novell and Windows platforms. Our contract on the SANS, uses the SANS dial home feature. We have had IBM people show up to replace a part we didn't even know was going bad, since there was no system issues. I know the SANS has been a godsend for us. We also had ineffecienet drive useage and old small drives. Moving things over to the SANS wasn't as bad as I feared. Other then adding additional Storage disks, we didn't buy it full, we have not had to do any other hardware upgrades to the system. I am afraid, since I am a lowly peon, I don't know much about the architecture of the SANS, but If you contact me of line, I will be happy to introduce you to our system engineer, who would know more. I don't know anything about the other product through... Sorry Elizabeth Thompson Service and Support Technician CCBC - Catonsville --Original Message----- From: Roger Seielstad [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 3:50 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: the IBM Shark I'm looking at a SAN for the sole purpose of eliminating the one-to-one relationship between disk enclosures and servers. I have some half empty arrays, and some that are maxed out, and its very inefficient (long term). I don't put much stock in the crap that can't work anyway, like snapshots, etc. ------------------------------------------------------ Roger D. Seielstad - MCSE Sr. Systems Administrator Inovis - Formerly Harbinger and Extricity Atlanta, GA > -----Original Message----- > From: MS Exchange List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 3:35 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > > > Hello, > > I can offer 1 data point of E2K on a SAN: > > It worked fine for about a year, but then began failing about > every 3 weeks. Several of the failures required Disaster > Recovery for the DBs. Strangely it always happened just > before I was going on a vacation, which does something bad > for Quality of Life if you're married, etc... > > Vendor replaced just about every single piece of hardware > over the various failures. On the last one I DR'd to a JBOD > we had laying around and everything has been fine since. A > relaxing Thanksgiving. > > I had great hopes for Snapshotting and other such SAN > possibilities, but Exchange doesn't support those natively. > And they aren't about to spend the money here for higher end > Backup software like Comm Vault, etc... So, that SAN got me > nothing in added functionality, just a lot of aborted vacations. > > YMMV, but what added functionality are you hoping to get from > the SAN? Are you sure Exchange/OS will actually support it? > And from the other E2K shops I know ... it looks like > Clustering one way or the other ends up reducing your > reliability and up-time. But, if you're own of those Admins > without family or interest in vacations there could be merit > in these options. > > Brent > > -----Original Message----- > From: Hansen, Eric [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Posted At: Friday, December 06, 2002 10:42 AM > Posted To: MS Exchange List > Conversation: the IBM Shark > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > > Hehe > > That would be me. :| > > We'll see how it goes. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Schwartz, Jim [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 11:02 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > You keep thinking your happy thoughts. <g> > > Who is going to be running your SAN? If you find yourself arguing the > difference between spindles and storage space, you're going > to have a grand > old time. > > The architecture for the large SAN vendors was based on the > limitations in > the IBM 3xxx mainframe systems. It was more cost effective to > place large > amounts of cache in the storage system to accommodate its > predictable, read > IO operations. You'll find that the typical answer to any > issue you have > with a large SAN is to throw more hardware at it. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Hansen, Eric [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 12:18 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > > :p that could be solved with proper planning and good lun > management. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Schwartz, Jim [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 9:01 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > You're going to carve up the disks and share spindles with > "critcal" servers > running high intensive databases? <snicker> > > Good luck. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Hansen, Eric [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 10:52 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > > We plan on using it for our 17 "critical" servers and to cut > the prices of > all the disk we have. Mostly Windows/SQL, and some AIX and > linux. Out the > door we were going to start with 3tb so the rumor of a 3.36tb > performance > boundary made me a little wary, but I'm not sure if there is > any truth to > it. > > e- > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Allhiser [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 8:47 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: the IBM Shark > > As DASDI for os390/Zos mainframes they're great. > Not aware of the exact performance boundary. > What do you plan to use them for. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Hansen, Eric [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 9:29 AM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: OT: the IBM Shark > > > Is anyone here happen to be running a IBM shark or possibly a > Hitachi 9900 > series SAN? We are looking at both of these and I have heard > rumors that > the shark has a performance boundary of 3.36 TB. Just curious. > > e- _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
