Recomendations for FC-attached storage appliance?

[Charles Swiger]

On Sep 21, 2005, at 2:12 PM, Danny Howard wrote:

> 1) Would anyone like to share a preferred storage solution?  My  
> dream is
> something where I can connect two FC controllers to two FreeBSD  
> servers.
> If one controller fails, or if one server fails, I can still mount the
> same disks via the redundant server or controller.
>
> It sounds like most solutions have the disks on one controller or the
> other, so if a controller fails, the disks are inaccessible until you
> swap out the failed controller.  The Apple Xserve RAID comes to mind.
>

The Xserve RAID does indeed have two separate controllers, each  
attached to a separate 2GB SBF port, and thus is a single point of  
failure.  On the other hand, having a dedicated channel for each  
drive rather than hooking them all into the FC mesh is a heck of a  
lot less expensive than providing completely redundant controllers,  
dual-loop connections for each storage device, etc, etc.  You get  
what you pay for.

If need be, have one set of 7 drives configured as a complete warm  
backup for the second set of 7 drives, which you can do using higher  
level software (like the ADIC StorEdge filesystem stuff Apple  
recommends).

It may be the case that you'd be happier with a NAS solution from  
Auspex, NetApp, etc, rather than trying to roll your own SAN...


> 2) Would anyone like to share a preferred HBA?  I am constantly
> frustrated by suggested solutions because it seems that every disk
> appliance only ever supports one HBA.  For example, the Apple ... only
> supports LSI7202XP.  My research has found zero evidence that this is
> supported by FreeBSD.  So, if that wont work, I should just run Linux?
> Or has someone stress-tested their favorite HBA and found it to be
> totally robust in some configuration ... ?
>

FreeBSD has driver support described in isp (Qlogic 2100, 2200, 2300)  
and mpt (LSI FC909, 919, 929).  I believe the LSI7202XP dual-port  
PCIX card uses the FC929X controller chip, so FreeBSD ought to  
support that HBA.

-- 
-Chuck