DL380G4 Storage Server and iSCSI and DFS

[Daniel Granero]

We're planning to dedicate a gigabit lan for
iSCSI storage.

What's better choice:

- Connect user drives directly to the NAS. This
requires connect the NAS to both, storage LAN and client computers LAN.

or

- Connect File Server with iSCSI to the NAS
then mount folders of iSCSI drive on DFS?
or

- Mount NAS storage user folders on DFS.

[Mark Mills]

Daniel,

I don't understand the choices that you're considering. Could you elaborate a bit more?

Your plan to use a dedicated GbE lan for iSCSI is the right thing to do. The DL380 Storage Server (NAS) with iSCSI Feature Pack will be capable of serving both files and blocks. To isolate the iSCSI traffice on a separate GbE lan, you'll configure one of the NIC ports on the DL380 to serve iSCSI to any initiators on the dedicated iSCSI lan. The other GbE port can be attached to the "user" lan and serve files to client systems and other servers. DFS applies only to the file serving and not to the iSCSI LUN's that the DL380 will be exporting through iSCSI. DFS will provide a way to create a single namespace across file systems that are being served by separate file servers.

Does this make sense?

Mark Mills
NAS Architect
HP