Sun 7110 Storage options

[cookie_monster]

How are you all using your SUN storage, i'm undecided on how to present certain types of data to users, general files/home folders etc.

I've been told that to use MS FSRM I would need to present an iSCSI LUN to a Windows host, we use alot of features of FSRM exe blocking and space monitoring and would like to use it as the 7110 doesn't offer the same level of control (as far as I can tell). Anyone got a setup like this?


Who is using a CIFS share for home folders direct off of the 7110, how well does this work with Windows groups and Active Directory / share and security permissions etc?


Comments?

Thanks.

[Ric_]

CIFS works fine on my 7110s. Obviously I'm lacking quota support and there's no file screening but I'm not overly bothered at the moment.

Don't use iSCSI if you do want to use FSRM though. NFS is far quicker.

[Duke]

We're using CIFS direct to our users. I'm a big FSRM fan too, particularly for quotas, but so far I've decided to live without them. I must admit this is one of the problems we're facing with the S7000, although I don't believe it's much better with other SANs, you just gets used to what Windows offers you.

You could do iSCSI/NFS to a Windows host and use that to serve up the storage with FSRM on it, but then you're adding another bottleneck, the Windows TCP/IP stack, and another point of failure. Plus you'll lose some of the really cool analytics.

Share and security permissions have worked great for me once I got my head around them. They've actually worked out being cleaner and more secure than a normal Windows ACL / share. So far I've only got a production 'resources' share but I have working proof of concept on user shares too.

Cheers,
Chris

[cookie_monster]

Initially I might have to go with the NFS option to allow FSRM it can be changed next year if I need to and I hear that future upadtes to the 7110 might add new features.


Couple of questions come to mind.

Will NFS traffic need to be seperated like iSCSI traffic and will jumbo frames be required?

How does Windows server connect to NFS does it require additional software?

[Duke]

Might be a good idea for performance and security reasons if all it's doing is talking directly to your Windows box.

Couldn't comment on jumbo frames, sorry.

I think you need the Unix Services for Windows (or something like that) for Windows to use NFS, that's a free download from Microsoft though. I've never done NFS on Windows so I'm not 100% sure.

Chris

[linescanner]

Might be a good idea for performance and security reasons if all it's doing is talking directly to your Windows box.

Couldn't comment on jumbo frames, sorry.

I think you need the Unix Services for Windows (or something like that) for Windows to use NFS, that's a free download from Microsoft though. I've never done NFS on Windows so I'm not 100% sure.

Chris

Be careful with services for Unix, I have found it to have some odd moments.

Test and test again for good measure