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Hi All, Has anyone got experience with NetApp I am trying to diagnose a citrix issue in the environment people are complaining of slowness and everything looks fine the only thing I can really point out is the CPU utilization on the NetApp is running at 100% can anyone tell me if this is normal and if not any troubleshooting I can do to find out the cause? Thanks in advance josh

Just to ask has anyone any knowledge of drobo b1200i. And using one as a san due to low budgets? Thank you

Evening all, While I should be on holiday, and not thinking about all things network, the boss ok'ed a SAN on Friday(which one is still to be decided, that will go to scrutiny in the new year). Currently we run 2 main hosts, both identical R710's on Server 2008R2, one purely on local storage and the other on a PERC attached MD1000 drive shelf. Each one has around 5 VM's on it. No clustering. The SAN is going to be storage for the VM's, as local storage is currently dwindling. The plan is to cluster the 2 servers and load balance the VM's over the 2 servers and provide enough oomph on each to failover to single node if needed. That has pretty much been decided, it is the how that I am scratching my head with. I would like to go with 2012R2 going forward, and the servers are on 2008R2 so would it be best to export the VM's to a share on the new SAN(shared on a different SAN attached server to the hosts) and then completely wipe and rebuild the 2 hosts from scratch as a 2012R2 cluster and then import the VM's back in to the new cluster? That seems to be the best way to do it to me, but am I right? Any input would be nice Thanks and Merry Christmas to you all. James

Hi All, Does anyone know of any good deals setups for 16tb SAN's we are doing our hardware plan for the next 2-3 years. NO SALES CALLS OR PITCHS PLEASE We just want rough prices and details. Stuart

Have a difficult one here. Does anyone know the reset procedure for the HP 352 HP 30-10010-02 Switch. We've tried the defaults, but no success. In desperate need of accessing them ASAP HP will reset but at the price of £200 per switch and we have 4 to do. Currently running a BruteForce attack but need a quicker method. anyone?

I've know of it for years but didn't feel I needed it. of course now that a drive on my SAN failed and the email alert failed I wished I'd spent the time setting one up. I assume I need some software (suggestions please) I'll need to set the devices (san, printers, switches) to use the server as the trap? Do I need something called MIB modules in order to use SNMP? Ideally I'd like the server software to email me on all warning and critical events...

Overland Storage is currently running a great promotion on one of their brilliant SAN solutions, the S1000. Purchase an eligible S1000 and get the replication license for free. This solution is really well worth a look if you’re looking for a new SAN solution, and with the free replication it gives you a little added bonus. Please send me a PM for more information, the pricing may surprise you Many thanks About the SnapSAN S1000 SnapSAN S1000 Non-stop Storage Services for the Most Demanding Applications The SnapSAN S1000 modular storage array is an ideal platform for providing non-stop storage services to the most demanding applications. Designed for high availability, the S1000 combines advanced data protection features and proven reliability with flexible host connectivity to ensure that it will integrate into any storage environment, right out of the box. Installation and management are simple and straight-forward with your choice of single or dual controllers; iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or SAS connectivity, and the ability to scale to 240TB. The SnapSAN S1000 delivers the perfect balance of price, performance, availability, and features to meet your business’s needs. The S1000 meets the critical needs for every business, providing an affordable, scalable and easy to manage solution without sacrificing performance or flexibility. With This Product You Can... • Deploy a modular storage solution with iSCSI, FC or SAS host connections • Provision cost effective SAN storage for Windows, VMware, Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X • Provides fully redundant 99.999% high availability with hot-swappable components • Scale to 240TB with the addition of the SnapSAN Expansions

Dear all, I'm looking at virtualising our server rack, and seeing as we have an SAS SAN, using a failover cluster as well, all using current hardware. We are a split site school, fibre-optic joining the two sites, with one network / AD, approx. 3400 students and 450 staff. Current hardware: 3 x IBM x3650 (2 NICs, 1 x E5430, 4GB) 2 x IBM x3550 M2 (2 NICs, 1 x E5540, 10GB) 1 x IBM x3550 M3 (2 NICs, 1 x E5620, 16GB) 1 x IBM x3550 M3 (2 NICs, 2 x E5620, 16GB) 1 x IBM DS3512 5TB SAN with dual controllers (4 SAS ports & 2 NICs per controller) Currently the SAN is connected to one of the x3550 M3 via both controllers for redundancy. At a high level I'm thinking the following: 2 x3650 as backup DCs (1 on each site) 1 x3650 with a 12TB NAS for backups (on the other site to the main server room) 4 node fail-over Hyper-V 2012 cluster on the 2 x3550 M2 and 2 x3550 M3 The cluster will contain the main DC (inc. DNS & DHCP), MS-SQL / application server, Print server, file server, SIMS server, SharePoint server. Anyway, I think the upgrades I need are as follows: 6 extra SAS controller cards and cables for the 3 x3550 not currently connected to the SAN 4 additional twin NIC modules for the 4 x3550 (to bring each one up to 4 NICs each) More RAM to bring all x3550 to a minimum of 16GB My questions are: How does the SAN connect to all 4 nodes? I think run 1 SAS cable from each node to each SAN controller (so 2 per node for redundancy) How does the SAN connect on the network? 1 NIC per controller is currently plugged in, but I haven't traced where they go yet How do the nodes wire up together for the cluster network / failover? I think each node will connect to each other node (3 NICs per node) or use a dedicated switch (1 NIC per node, or 2 teamed) How do the nodes connect to the main network? Here I'm thinking that the 4th NIC on each node connects to the main backbone / network switch (or 2 teamed if using a node switch for Q3) How am I doing? Can anyone offer any advice on the above? Although my investigation is into a 4 node cluster, I actually suspect a 2 node cluster would suffice, on the two x3550 M3, but if I can get the budget I may as well make it a 4 node. The IT budget here is a very strange affair, so it wouldn't be as though I could use the unspent money on another project. If the 'budget' isn't approved, then I will look to the 2 node cluster and possibly stretch to an additional E5620 CPU. Many thanks for any comments!

Ok, so I have 2 Dell R710, twin 6 core Xeon w/HT, 16GB RAM, FC HBA acting as fileservers running Server 2008 R2 I have just purchased a Dell FC SAN made up of: MD3600f MD1200 24 x 600GB 15k SAS drives The MD3600f connects into my SAN switch, along with the 2 file servers. The MD1200 connects via dual 6Gbps SAS into the MD3600f. The File servers hold network homes for around 2000 users (mainly macintosh, so quite a read intensive workflow). We have about 1200 devices. FS1 = ~1000 students roughly 2TB FS2 = ~1000 students roughly 2TB How should I configure my storage to suit this environment. It needs to be fast - we were using a sata based system before, but it couldn't deliver the IOPS we required, hence the new SAN. Now the questions: Should I have one raid 10 array per server, or one large raid 10 array split into luns per server? Should I separate homes and profiles onto different luns, or physical disks - we do have some windows users too. I only initially require about 4TB (after RAID and formatting) but this will grow as i move other users over. Any thoughts / suggestions welcome. Thanks.

Hi, Not sure where to put this, but here goes. I'm looking at replacing our aging servers, and wanted to Migrate them to Hyper-V. I was looking at using a Dell SCv2020 with SAS connections back to a few Servers to run a Hyper-V Failover Cluster. My question is, and I apologise if its a stupid question, but everything I read just says the storage (and the connections to is) need to be iSCSI-3 capable, and that fibre channel is. However I wanted to use the 4x 12Gb SAS connections direct to the servers. Would I be able to setup a Hyper-V Failover Cluster with CSV using a SAS attached SAN? eg 4x servers with dual SAS HBA's, each connection to one of the 4 SAS ports on the SAN, (the SCv2020 SAN has dual controllers, so each server would connect to each controller) as per link or would I have to use iSCSI over Ethernet, or Fibre Channel or would you highly recommend against using SAS over any of the other two? Cheers in advance

Hi guys, Bit stumped, wondered if anyone has any ideas. Yesterday at around 2:30pm, both our SAN switches lost connection to the SAN. Hyper-V tried to failover but because the connection to the SAN was lost, we were flooded with disk IO errors and most the servers seem to have corrupted, not to the point they are completed screwed, they did come back up... but enough that we are having an absolute world of issues this morning, I have had to restart all the VM's and they were running disk checks, clearing entries for corrupt files. What is confusing me is that most the machines lost connection to the network as well as our cameras back to the NVR we have. Initially before I discovered the SAN was having a fit, I thought one of our access switches in the server room had gone awry, but the SAN switches are directly plugged into the SAN so how did they also lose connection (apologies if I sound dim here and am missing something, I am fairly new to delving into the technicalities of SAN storage) Does this sound like a power issue? a switch issue? a cabling issue? am I potentially missing something? - head full of questions! I do not want this to happen again, obviously, so am trying to work out what on earth happened! Many thanks

Hey everyone! I need some advice or feedback... We are a fast growing company that is outgrowing our storage needs, and are looking to upgrade. We are looking for a scalable storage solution that can: Grow with us and is easy to scale and maintain. Support different storage pools with different speeds and configurations to be tuned for our specific user needs (see below)... Designers: Work with large files such as psd, ia, and a little bit of video Video Editors: Work with everything from HD to 6k footage and need a lot of bandwidth for editing with streams from the storage server Business User: Work with standard business apps and files such as excel, pdf, keynote, ppt, etc... So the storage must be configured to all us to meet the needs of video, design, business storage, and dumb storage (archiving and backup). The system are looking real hard at is iXsystem for a TrueNAS unit. We posted a few questions about storage here, but I would like your opinion about the specs and if you think this solution is an excellent one. Have in mind that our main requirements are: easy to manage, easy and cheap to scale (grow as we grow). * TrueNAS Z35 3U (ZFS - NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, iSCSI, AFP - Snapshots, Compression, Shadow Migration, Cloning, Remote Replication) - 16 x 3.5" Caching SAS Drive Bays - 256 RAM - TrueNAS Extreme-Performance Write Cache (SZR) - TrueNAS High-Performance Read Cache: 800GB SSD - TrueNAS 10 Gigabit Quad Port Controller - Zpool #1 - VM OS Storage - (5 x 400GB SSD) - 2 x 400GB vdevs in RAID10 + 1 x 400GB Hot Spare ~745GB Usable - Zpool #2 - Fast Storage (38 x 4TB SAS) - 18 vdevs (4TB Mirrors) in RAID10 + 2 x 4TB Hot Spares ~64.8TB Usable -Zpool #3 - Backup Repository (24 x 4TB SAS) - 4 x 16TB vdevs (5 x 4TB) in RAIDZ + 2 x 4TB Hot Spares ~58.4TB Usable Questions: This system is being quoted for around $90k. What do you think about the company, system, and specs? Fair Priced? How is ZFS file systems for a NAS/SAN and would it meet all our needs or is there a better option that you might know of? What concerns would you have? Can it scale well? Is there a much cheaper solution that we should look hard at? Thanks again and would love any feedback / suggestions (even willing to pay for consulting) Cheers!

Just wondering if anyone is using an alternative to Backup Exec (2008) to back up a stack of Windows Server 2008 R2 servers on Citrix Xenserver? We are currently doing D2D2T on the individual virtual servers, which works fine on the disk 2 disk part but our tape autoloader is beginning to reach capacity. Almost all the data is held on an HP MSA2000 SAN and yes I do need to recover individual files!

Hi there, I've got two servers to replace (both DC's) and increase storage space over the summer and I'm currently looking into virtualisation, rather than like for like. Mainly for the improved disaster recovery and other advantages. A few possibilities have cropped up that I would appreciate some advice on. Most quotes suggest using VMware Essentials Plus as the best hypervisor for my scenario. I'm also tempted by hyper-v r2 and doing most of the setup myself because of the cost saving and advanced features. Is anyone using VMWare essentials? is it a easy system to manage? I'm aware of the upgrade and server limit. I like the look of Microsoft DPM 2010 (rather than backup exec upgrade) and system manager essentials 2010 for a hyper-v environment. Quotes I have mention veeam and vranger for backup - any view on which is best? SAN - I like the idea of a VSA using datacore, lefthand with local replicated server storage etc over a single SAN box - does anyone use this or recommend a good SAN system? I have a budget of approx £15,000 to replace the server hardware, get a SAN, increase the storage capacity to >5Tb, and get a backup system. Is this do-able, assuming I do most of the work? Thanks,

Hi all, Am developing a proposal to update our core server infrastructure as they are over 6 years old now. I have about 1000 student users and 100 staff, and host an exchange server which at present only has staff mailboxes, but will very soon have student mailboxes too. The exchange server is very much up to the task however. I would like to give every student 1Gb storage, and want to optimise the bandwidth available for file serving. I am thinking of two options at the moment: Option 1 is made up from separate rackmount servers. 2 domain controllers and 5 file servers, one for each intake year, dishing out their my docs. Each server would have 250Gb RAID 5 and 2 nics. Option 2 is to whack in a bladecenter S with all 6 blades. Virtualise one powerful blade into two domain controllers and then the other 5 less powerful blades act as profile servers. Allow the 5 profile servers to make use of the shared storage for docs and have their own internal drives for the OS. I prefer option 2 as it is more expandable, takes less cab space, uses less power etc. But have two concerns. 1 - am I wasting the power and flexibility of the blades by using them as file servers and missing the ethos of the blade; and 2 - what it the performance like when the 5 blades are using the same discs? Would be interested to hear what other people use as their core server infrastructure, and any views on the two options above. The third option I suppose is to get a totally separate SAN and maybe 3 very high powered rackmount servers and then virtualise the whole shebang, but I think that may be a bit too expensive. Cheers!

Hi All, I am looking at virtualising our physical servers here over the summer and am interested to find out what others have in place. I have provisionally specced the following 2 x VM host 2 x SAN switch 1 x SAN 1 x tertiary backup server - to hold 14 full backups - circa 1 per server and 13 incrementals per server (using VEEAM) 1 x NAS for longer term backups using VEEAM Is this on par with what others have inplace or am I under speccing things.? Cheers Andy

Hello, we are currently running Backup Exec 11d on two different networks but they are backing up separately. We are using a Dell tape drive for one network and Portable Hard Drives (Backup-to-disk folders) for the other network. We have other servers that are running remote agents that also backup to the tape drive through Backup Exec. At the moment all of our servers are Dell and run Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition with Service Pack 2 I have been asked to research into purchasing and using a SAN solution. I will be in charge of installing and running all of this. I am familiar with using Backup Exec with tape drives and Portable Hard Drives but am completely new to anything to do with SAN. I would be grateful if anyone could please advise me on the following: - what hardware, software etc would be recommended and prices/vendors etc. - If we can still use this with the Backup Exec 11d software that we have at the moment (We will shortly be upgrading to v12) and if we have to purchase anything else with Symantec in order for this solution to work (i.e. licences etc)? - Would we be able to use one solution to cover two different networks (although in the future we will be merging the two networks together so planning for change and expansion will need to be an option!)? Hope someone can helps me with this! Thank You. Shelley.