[BBLISA] Recommendation for NAS appliance?

[Jeff Wasilko]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 05:25:10PM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
> Paul Beltrani wrote:
> I know there are some systems that separate the drive racks from the 
> controller modules, which then permit redundant controllers, but is that 
> the class of system you're talking about?

I'm only familiar with EMC's NAS devices (and also Sun's clustered
Fishworks/7000 series systems).

EMC's Celerra NAS devices have a fully redundant back-end Clariion
array. This has the typical config of dual storage processors that can
take over for each other connected to dual-ported trays of disk.

The front-end NAS datamovers are single points of failure, but run in an
active-passive cluster. Failover usually takes a minute or so. We've had
a few failures on our Celerra datamovers and the clustering worked ok
there.

Sun's clustered 7000 systems (7310 and 7410) can run in either an
active-active or active-passive configuration. Failover usually takes
about a minute on our 2-tray systems, but can supposedly take more time
on systems with more disks. Our experience with the 7000 series hasn't
been completely trouble-free, but in terms of value for the dollar they
can't be beat. The software keeps getting more stable, and they've got a
lot of features lined up for 2010.

-j