Derek Lai wrote:

Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of applications NAS works just fine.

I agree. Use NFS. Configure it well. Build a "storage network" if you like, put in dedicated GbE switch(ws) (10 GbE?) with the Oracle server(s) and the NAS Filer(s) in it, make sure everything is Jumbo frames of course, tweak if for optimum performance as best possible, make sure traffic flows the way it should a.s.o. No client traffic on that net.

Use ONTAP 7.x (aggregates) and have enough spindles. Go for the smaller drives probably, not the 144G's, but the 72's

Most likely this will be Good Enough(TM) so you can stay away from complicated bug-ridden SAN setups that always are a nightmare to change config-wise. Especially if you need to change the config quite often in some way (= more than once a year...)

Just my 0.10 SEK worth

/M