[TriLUG] SAN file locking

[bak]

On 12/19/11 10:12 AM, Jim Ray wrote:
> It is my understanding the some of the SANs available have the ability
> to combine things like fast and expensive SSD with slow and cheap SATA
> (well, not so cheap after Thailand flood).

Yes. Because why make all your blocks fast if you can get good-enough
performance and only make some of them fast?

> Any recommendation on a starter SAN in the 9 TB+ range? I am interested
> in EMC, netapp and HP/LeftHand yet am open to suggestion.

Oh, NetApp for sure. But since I work there, I might be slightly biased
in this regard. :)

I consider EMC to be our worthy competitor. LeftHand is neat, but now
that HP owns them... well, HP doesn't have a great track record of
picking winners, and they usually end up destroying the winners they do
pick. (Yes I am still bitter about Tru64.)

In a previous life I used to be a UNIX and storage admin and we had EMC,
NetApp, and IBM equipment. Even back then I liked NetApp because I found
it easy to use and highly flexible, whereas the EMC folks wanted me to
give their array a telephone line so they could dial in and do stuff to
it. As a UNIX admin I was offended by this idea, but if I had been a
mainframe guy or not paid to do admin things full-time I might have
appreciated it. IMHO, YMMV, etc. for the last two paragraphs. :)

Both EMC and NetApp have offerings these days that will do both NAS and
SAN in the same box.

--bak