issues with sharing NAS/SAN with NT servers

[Mark Vollmers]

Hi, all. got a question. We currently have a D class (running 11.0) with a RAID 5 drive (for the engineering side) and a number of NT servers (for mail, office stuff, etc). Our NT sysadmin is trying to put together a proposal for new equipment, and was looking at a NAS or SAN drive. he wondered if I could use this as well, as that makes it more appealing to the moneyholders. My drive is old and should by rights be replaced anyway. The understanding that we both have is that with the new ones, you can partition them out so that unix could have a chunk and nt a chunk, etc. Are there any issues with configuring this up or using it? Can it be used with a D-class? any other thoughts on what to do, how to do it, or if it should be done? (how's that for a broad question). anyway, I'm a newbie when it comes to drives, so any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

Mark

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi Mark,

I'll try and give you broad-based opinion..... :^)

The first problem you may have is whether your D class server has the right type of HBA card.
Have a look at this table. The older A3591? does not support fabric.
http://www.hp.com/products1/unixserverconnectivity/storage/adapter15/specifications/index.html
Most of the hardware vendors allow this mixture anyway, but on must be segrgated to different ports within your disk array. This of course depends on the vendor and model of the disk. Just remember that cheap will not have the flexibility. When dividing up your disk array, the Unix side will want smallish chunks (LUN's) for flexibility we use 8.8Gb LUN's and the NT's will most likely not want anything under 200Gb LUN sizes.

Hope this is something to get you started....
Michael

[harry d brown jr]

There are some serious issues with mixing HPux servers with NT's or Sun boxes on SAN's, when sharing the same storage path. NT's and Sun boxes don't play well with HP's. On our SAN, which is an EMC SAN with Symmetrix's we keep the NT's& Sun's away from the HP's.

For NAS, I'd suggest using samba (or hp's port called cifs9000) because it's usable with NT.

live free or die
harry

[Vincent Fleming]

Mark,

You can do both SAN and NAS, if you like. NT and HP-UX play nicely in a SAN if you can use all-HP equipment (meaning HBA's and storage - the switches can be most anything out there). We've got it all worked out. From Harry's comment, I gather that EMC has some problems with their HP-UX/NT integration, but ours works well.

If you don't need to have an NT box and your HP-UX box share the same data files at the same time (a shared drive, where NT and UNIX share the same chunk of the array), a SAN is your best solution. SAN is somewhat simpler than NAS, and has significantly higher performance.

NAS allows you to easily share files between UNIX and NT. SAN is better at making seperate areas for UNIX and NT data.

An example SAN configuration for you would be 2 FC switches (like the FC16B from HP), HP Fibre channel adapters for both the NT and HP-UX, a VA7410 Fibre Channel disk array, Secure Manager software for the VA7410 (which enables sharing the array among multiple hosts), and some Fibre Channel cables.

If you would also like NAS, you can get a NAS8000 nas head, and attach it to the SAN. This would allow you to have SAN and NAS at the same time. (SAN for UNIX, NAS for NT). There are several models of NAS heads available from HP, too. Take a look at hp.com under Products.

You should consult your Sales rep from HP (and his Solutions Architect) for details on how HP can help you.

Good luck!

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi
I don't think is is a general problem connecting HP/Sun/NT/W2000 in a SAN but, with SAN, there is a risk of compatiblity problem . If possible, when buying SAN components check that all components is verified working together. I use HP-UX and NT/W2000 boxes in a small SAN. I had some problems initially but now evrything works fine.

[Mark Vollmers]

Thanks for the replys, all. We're not going to be sharing drives betwen servers (I do run samba for sharing some to workstations), so I'm not going to worry about that. I'll have to pay attention to the hardware a little, I guess, but that's not too bad. This is still in planning stage, but it's nice to know that it should work. Thanks!

Mark