Re: Fibre Channel vs iSCSI
- From: Chris Cox <ccox_nopenothis@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:02:07 -0600
On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 08:37 -0800, Suk wrote:
Hi
I am thinking about investing in a SAN for my company & am not sure
whether to go with Fibre Channel or ISCSI
In opensuse 10.3 which would be more favourable in terms of support
for hardware , ease of configuration, manageability / maintainability
etc?
IMHO, the answer to all of those is fibre...
So... why not fibre?... COST.
iSCSI has a lot of dependencies on software initiators
and such... offset that to fibre which requires HBA
drivers that function correctly.
In both cases, it's wise that the SAN be segregated, but
the obvious temptation with iSCSI is to allow some
of that to happen across your normal (e.g. IP) network.
After all, one of the benefits to iSCSI is with regards
to routing... so ease of interoperability may be
slightly favorable to iSCSI... but I'd argue that 99%
of people that deploy iSCSI don't understand what
they are doing anyhow (so really you just have a
bigger mess in the end).
We do fibre here... it just works. Cost is an issue,
cables are expensive, fibre switches are expensive, and
HBA's are expensive. But IMHO, the difference between
fibre SAN and iSCSI SAN is that one WORKS. Seems that
people treat their iSCSI infrastructure like they treat
their normal IP network structure, and iSCSI needs something
more resilient (durable). You can't just unplug cables and
move them around like you do with normal networking...
(another reason why it needs to be segregated... and of
course if you want more than 1Gbit... cost then becomes
an issue with IP infrastructure).
So in many ways if you do iSCSI, you NEED to view it JUST
like you would a fibre network... with all of the value
of the fabric intact.
So... in all my ramblings... I'm going to say, go fibre
(though I'm certain that won't be the popular answer...
but I think it's the more honest answer).
Oh.. and lastly... we're talking enterprise level stuff.
And while I'll admit I do run a fibre based SAN at
home AND I do use openSUSE 10.3, I'd highly recommend
running SLES if the environment is truly important
to you (that's what I use with the larger SAN I
have at the office). My home setup is openSUSE 10.3,
with a 2Gbps Qlogic HBA to a Qlogic Sanbox 5200 with
two Nexsan ATABoy2f's.
At the office, we use SLES 10, Qlogic switches, Qlogic HBA's
and a combination of fabric devices. Most of our large
scale storage uses Nexsan SATABeasts. We do both
2Gbps and 4Gbps with 1OGbps links between switches
(which can be very expensive btw).
Recommendation, PATCH the firmware on your fabric
switches to latest levels (yes... it matters much)
prior to establishing the fabric... especially if
more than one switch in involved. A fibre switch does
its magic on the ports to the devices, but the interconnect
loops to/from each switch is just old style fabric loop...
so any interruption there can have devastating effects
to the fabric (in general, at latest patch levels, many
switches will have some live firmware upgrade options
that attempt to keep the fabric in place... but you
need to be at latest levels).
Sorry about being so wordy.... but hope it helps.
.
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