Reply to rant: [olug] server life span

[Chris Garrity]

Got lots of extra cash, and lots of crap; err, data?

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/products/ess/index.html

David Walker wrote:

>Thanks for the excellent explanation.  I now realize that I need one.  Which 
>one do you recommend.  I am, of course, interested in price, performance, 
>redundancy, and the ability to manage it easily through the command line or a 
>web interface.
>
>On Friday 27 September 2002 09:47 am, olug-admin at olug.org wrote:
>  
>
>>A SAN (Storage Area Network) moves the physical storage from the server to
>>a central appliance.  The server gets a fibrechannel card which appears to
>>the OS as a SCSI controller.  The FC card connects to the SAN appliance
>>which presents to the server OS x-number of virtual disks.  With some SAN's
>>you can even have boot bios on the FC card to allow for the server to be
>>completely diskless.
>>
>>The advantage of a diskless server is that you can swap out the server
>>hardware without losing your OS and data.  Just pull the FC card, replace
>>the server, put the FC card in the new server and turn it on.  Your done.
>>
>>The real strength of a SAN is that you can manipulate your disks without
>>disturbing your data or taking your servers offline.   You can resize,
>>mirror, swap, and add disks without your users knowing anything.  Some SAN
>>appliances even allow you to upgrade your disks in the array without taking
>>it offline.
>>
>>Bill
>>
>>***********Reply separator*************
>>
>>
>>
>>                      "Don E. Kauffman"
>>                      <dkauffman at tconl.        To:       olug at olug.org
>>                      com>                     cc:
>>                      Sent by:                 Subject:  Re: Reply to rant:
>>[olug] server life span olug-admin at olug.o
>>                      rg
>>
>>
>>                      09/26/2002 04:31
>>                      PM
>>                      Please respond to
>>                      olug
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>For those of us who are in the newbie category. what's a SAN? How is it
>>different than a normal server / network?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>Don
>>
>>O
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>    
>>
>
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>  
>