50TB!? part II

Continuing on my prior 50TB post ...

After a conference call with some Apple enterprise folks last week, today Jennifer Miller was once again onsite to chat with us about XSAN stuff.  Jennifer is an Apple Systems Engineer and not only does she know her stuff but she's also an excellent communicator.

So for 2 hours we chatted and drew stuff on the whiteboard to flesh out how XSAN works and what makes sense in our environment.  Very early into the discussion Jennifer let us know that XSAN would not do everything I was wanting ... rats!  But I really appreciated that honesty.  At the end of our time Ed and I feel like we have a really good grasp on all the pieces (and there are many!) that make up an XSAN.  It's a very slick yet complicated technology.

Here's what our first step into an XSAN would most likely look like ...

In the end the XSAN doesn't meet my "one place for all data" model, but for our video needs it holds a lot of value.

Some other nuggets gleaned from our time with Jennifer:

- Apple recommends Exabyte tape autoloaders
- Apple recommends Atempo's Time Navigator backup software for the XSAN.  I'd never heard of it before, but it appears very robust and even has windows agents for SQL and Exchange.  Hmm!  Recall that another of our objectives is trying to get one backup solution for the entire organization.  Atempo deserves a closer look.
- XSAN is designed for big files
- XSAN can not support VM's running on the SAN .. DOH!
- Apple OSX Server Sofware Support covers all sorts of stuff including Final Cut and even Active Directory integration ... that's got some value. 
- OSX Leopard has much improved AD integration ... Jennifer said she'd have to kill me if she told me any further details.

So the XSAN is still on our radar as a possible solution ... just not the complete solution.

Contenders on our list currently:
Apple XSAN
EqualLogic
DataCore
Intel
IBM

Still more conference calls and onsite visits yet this month and the following ... yee haw!

Comments

[William Phelps]

Atempo, a company which spends more money on R&D and less on ads, seems to be better known in other countries. FalconStor is another good name to check out.

[Scott]

I've seen a couple of demos of the EqualLogic products and WOW are they impressive.

[Allen Madding]

After a lot of experience with several different tape drive manufacturers products, I'd have to concurr with her recommendation of Exabyte tape autoloaders. I firmly believe they are head and shoulders above the rest.

[Chris Kehayias]

Have you looked into what it takes to hook up the XSAN to a windows environment. A couple years ago, I looked at the Apple XSAN, and concluded that the cost to hook it up to a windows box was far too great to justify the SAN. You have to use a third party volume management software that was $$$ pricey. I don't know if that is still the case, but definitely check it out!

As for Exabyte... They are definitely nice autoloaders. I have worked with several in the past, and they are definitely rock solid!

Since we too are looking for a SAN, I want to hear about what you find out!

[Jarett K]

Don't discount HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) or Pillar. Pillar was founded by Larry Ellison of Oracle fame. Hitachi are what I use day in day out where I work. Awesome units. If a disk goes bad, the unit tells Hitachi and I have a new disk couriered over whithin 4 hours as part of support.

You can mix and match FC or SATA in the HDS units. Something like a AMS500 or AMS1000 would suit your needs.
iSCSI or Fiberchannel, and also NAS addon appliances.
You CAN run your VMs and ESX off of the SAN. Same with Oracle RAC and any other need.

I'm running many TB off of a HDA SAN and about to add another unit. 30% of my data volume changes daily... hows that for handling serious IO?

Apple XSAN is just a glorified JBOD.

Buy it right the first time, youll be happy you did. Good SAN and good FiberChannel switch = happy admin and company.

[Trevor Davis]

Jason - With the mention of 50T, my brain immediately goes to "how are they rendering all that video". Some time ago you posted on wanting to do distributed rendering onsite at GCC, but I haven't seen a followup. You also made a ghetto-fabulous RAID for one of your guys (http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2006/08/ghettofabulous_.html). What have you done recently with rendering RAIDS onsite?