Fibre Channel SAN

[wesleyw]

I am looking at a very nicely priced SAN unit however it's fibre channel and I have been using iSCSI SANs and our VM system connects to them fine, is there a way of converting the fibre channel to iSCSI? Cost is the problem here as I would have to look at setting up the 5 physical XenServers to fibre channel and that wouldn't be cost effective.

 

 

 

Wes

[PotNoodleTech]

You can get bridges but theyre not cost effective - something like iPBridge 2700R/D | iSCSI to Fibre Channel Bridge | ATTO Store

 

You'd be better off either buying the fibre channel SAN and biting the bullet and installing fibre on your vm hosts, or just buy an iSCSI san instead.

[DMcCoy]

So you'd need the SAN, one (ideally two) fibre channel switches and some fibre channel HBAs for your XenServers.

 

There really is no point getting a FC box and then converting it to iSCSI, you lose all the benefits of it being FC in the first place. Do remember that while FC is nice, just having it on a SAN doesn't mean the SAN is any good (like the HP MSA2000s).

[wesleyw]

Yeah I think I'm going to look around for an iSCSI one as the amount of cards let alone the fibre switches means the bridge was actually significantly cheaper.

 

 

Wes

[gshaw]

Do remember that while FC is nice, just having it on a SAN doesn't mean the SAN is any good (like the HP MSA2000s).

 

Not had good experiences with them then? I don't have one but seemed like they were fairly well regarded for basic block storage if you don't expect anything fancy...

[glennda]

So you'd need the SAN, one (ideally two) fibre channel switches and some fibre channel HBAs for your XenServers.

 

There really is no point getting a FC box and then converting it to iSCSI, you lose all the benefits of it being FC in the first place. Do remember that while FC is nice, just having it on a SAN doesn't mean the SAN is any good (like the HP MSA2000s).

 

I've got an HP MSA2000FC and its brilliant - can't fault the equipment why do you say they are not good?

 

You could look at this HP 8Gb Simple SAN Connection Kit (AK241A)

 

Which is everything you need bundled into a package.