Re: [Xen-users] Network based storage - NBD/AoE/iSCSI other?

[Thomas Harold <tgh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Luke Crawford wrote:
> Like I said, if you are just going for capacity, use IDE over NFS on a 
> 10/100 network.  a 1000 network might be worth it if most of your stuff 
> is sequential (as IDE comes pretty darn close and sometimes beats SCSI 
> for sequential access) but in my environment, there really is no such 
> thing as sequential access.
> My main point was that compared to a 1GB Ethernet 'dedicated to storage' 
> network, a 1GB FC network is cheaper and faster;   I believe this to be 
> true even if your end disks are SATA.  (but like I said, I might be 
> wrong on that part;  I'm not really familiar with pricing for 
> network-attached IDE arrays; I can't afford gigabit Ethernet equipment 
> of a quality I'd like to maintain, and I use 10 or 15K scsi/FC for 
> everything that matters anyhow.)
For a small business, you can probably setup a small SAN for not that 
much.  16/24 port "smart" gigabit switches that support VLANs, trunking, 
jumbo frames can be had for under $500.  Put two of those together and 
you have a fault-tolerant SAN fabric.  Dual-port server gigabit NICs for 
$180 each to connect to the SAN switch fabric.  Do some bonding of 
multiple dual/quad port NICs for bandwidth / fault-tolerance on the SAN 
unit.
We're slowly rolling out a SAN at our small company.  We reckon that 
even if we move from gigabit iSCSI or AoE to FC down the road, we can 
still reuse all of the ethernet equipment for other projects.  (Such as 
upgrading from inexpensive "smart" switches to fully managed switches, 
or upgrading from Intel server NICs to iSCSI HBAs, or buying a pre-built 
iSCSI target devices.)
That's probably the biggest argument for iSCSI/AoE vs FC.  You can get 
started for under $10k, prove that it works, then decide where you want 
to spend more money on additional performance while reusing the old 
equipment to spruce up other sections of your network.
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