Glasgow Storage Area Network (SAN) Update

Where We Were (April 05) Why Consider a SAN Heterogeneous environment Protects against SPF Storage aggregation into virtual pools Less complex management Lower admin costs More suited to DR Potential for server consolidation Significantly improves backup restore capabilities Improves data security, accessibility and availability

Proposed SAN Model A core fabric spanning 2 sites A number of FC edge switches linked to the FC core A number of disk arrays providing the storage requirements for: Research projects Mirroring Core services Other applications A number of servers connected via FC Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs) An enterprise class backup facility NAS heads for file sharing functionality iSCSI support for fabric extension to non FC attached clients FC/IP support for native fabric extension

Proposed SAN Model

What Factors Need to Be Addressed When Considering a SAN Solution? Fabric costs Fabric Design Switch costs HBA costs Fibre provision Manufacturers limits Vendor and OS support Fabric extension NAS heads iSCSI and FC/IP SAN management Disk grouping Security Performance monitoring

What Factors Need to Be Addressed When Considering a SAN Solution? Disk virtualisation requirements Virtualising file systems Backup Regimes Type – Snapshot, Full and Incremental Extent – wont be able to backup all SAN storage Media – Tape, staging disk then tape Costs – hardware and media Fabric Connection Guidelines Not an open SAN Restrict to manageable set of proven hardware compatible systems Funding Initial SRIF Requires significant investment over time Who pays?

What Happened EU procurement process for SAN commenced with publication of official notice in OJEC Expression of interest from interested suppliers required by mid April 04 Operational requirement and invitation to tender documentation produced and reviewed by small working group 20 expressions of interest received Initial shortlist drawn up and operational requirement/invitation to tender sent on 11 th may 04 with closing date for responses 10 th June 04 Responses received from usual suspects Suppliers meetings held and shortlist refined BAFO sent to short listed suppliers on 18 th august 04 with responses by 10 th sep 04 Final shortlist of three suppliers agreed and detailed negotiations commenced Decision on best overall solution and actual spend made by end of Nov 04 Kit delivered between 23 rd December and 10 th January

Procurement process OJEC Notice issued March 04 Expressions of Interest (20) by mid April; Initial shortlist agreed (13 suppliers) Produce and review OR/ITT and issue to short listed suppliers 11 th may 04; responses by 11 th June 04 Review responses arrange suppliers meetings, refine shortlist and potential solutions (DELL, EMC, Hitachi, SUN, HP, SGI, IBM) Issue BAFO on 18 th Aug 04 with responses by 10 th Sep 04 Review BAFO responses decide final shortlist and commence detailed negotiations with Access (SUN), and Computacenter/OCF (IBM)) Choose solution and place orders end of Nov 04 Comptacenter (IBM) Kit delivered between 23 rd Dec and 10 th Jan

What Did We Get A lot of work – electrical and other provisioning work A lot of boxes and a lot of heavy boxes Logistical nightmare – getting the right boxes to the right location (saved by Nano Fab refurb) Some pictures And the end result

Where to Now – Initial Allocations Initial commitments are 8TB grid, 4TB Hatti, 3.5TB student support This leaves 9TB approx for other purposes Initial proposal is to allocate 1TB approx per faculty but; This is a file level allocation and will require fileservers and decisions on the delivery mechanism e.g NFS, Netware, SMB, CIFS A suitable client/server model

Where to Now – Future Provision Need to have an attractive costing model for future buy in Complicated by (DR) replication model and backup requirements Initial expansion will be costly requiring additional FC switches, storage arrays and File servers Thereafter additional capacity would be disks/expansion units and servers File level service requiring server consolidation to provision Aiming for as low a cost per Megabyte as possible Would not attempt to recover capital costs Ask University to fund infrastructure with Fac/Dept funding their own additional storage services

Is SAN Storage Really Cheaper Than DAS Difficult to estimate but studies highlight the following: DAS typically reaches 10-50% utilisation. SAN typically 80-90% Highest cost is Sys Admin some say by a factor of 7/1 Some studies indicate the watershed between DAS and SAN is reached at around 12 TB Need to include all costs not just headline costs

Is SAN Storage Really Cheaper Than DAS References: ?articleId= ms/dsm/technical/cost-recovery/cost- comparison-das-san.html e-finance/group95520.adp