I can't comment much on the other vendors' most current offerings, but iSCSI is anything but bolt-on for the filers. NetApp has the lion's share of iSCSI deployments worldwide.

FAS270 (including clusters) running iSCSI configurations supporting Exchange, SQL, and all varieties of other applications are going in all over the place.

With a FAS270c, tiered storage (mixing FC & SATA) is possible, with certain conditions. All secondary shelves are either SATA OR FC. From the system configuration guide:

Caution 2: While both types of disk shelves can connect to the filer, if there is an existing DiskShelf14mk2 FC connected to the FAS270/FAS270c, then any additional expansion shelf must be a DiskShelf14mk2 FC. If however, you do not have an expansion shelf connected to the FAS270/FAS270c, then you can choose to connect to a loop of DiskShelf14mk2 AT or a loop of DiskShelf14mk2 FC, but not both. The FAS270/FAS270c does not support both types of disk shelves on the same loop.

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From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Raj Patel Sent: Wednesday, 22 November 2006 8:40 a.m. To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: iSCSI SAN Queries

Hi,

We're in the preliminary scoping phase for a low/mid-range iSCSI SAN solution. I was wondering if anyone had any positive or negative real-world experiences with -

NetApp 270c HDS AMS200 EMC CX320

At the moment the NetApp is the most familiar to me as I have used one of their NAS boxes before and the simulator provides a pretty good indication of how it works. However the iSCSI seems a bit of a 'bolt-on' and its not clear if it will handle tiered storage as well as the other vendors (then again does it matter?).

The HDS & EMC are unknown quantities (other than what I can glean from the web).

Any feedback concerning ease of use, expansion, licensing, snapshot mechanism (the EMC seems clunky from their literature but I don't know if that's the case in operation).

Also does anyone have any iSCSI 'gotchas' ? Is a TOE one of those 'nice to have but not really necessary' things on a modern server or should it be factored into the solution ?

Cheers, Raj.

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