RE: MIDRANGE-L Digest, Vol 5, Issue 1464

["Karl Lauritzen Jr." <klauritzen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John those are all great points and the ammunition I was looking for. I
have not been comfortable with this NAS thing from the start and I sure
do not need to create another job or chore. My problem is my lease for
my 810 does not expire until Feb 2007. So the new i5 disks cannot help
me now. But with your points here I am going to explore ways to speed
this up and see if the TCO is lower. I think it is. I am just trying to
explore all options and get comfortable with one and use money wisely.
Stock options you know. 

Thank you for your time and all your points. I appreciate all the
knowledge/opinion this list provides.


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message: 2
date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 07:47:11 -0500
from: "Jones, John \(US\)" <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx>
subject: RE: More DASD

Good point, Lukas.  Karl, you should be looking at the 5 (or more) year
TCO before investing in the NAS (or any technology).  It may be cheaper
than i5 DASD up front, but when you add in another backup method and
additional media, additional required staff/admin knowledge, changes to
your DR procedures and environment, etc. I wonder if it's truly an
effective solution compared to adding 2 mirrored 300GB 10K disks to your
i5 as a secondary ASP (or iASP; whatever) and using all of the
procedures you use today.

Now, a NAS may still be a better fit as you could use it for other
things, so your TCO formula can get complicated.  For instance, you
could do your daily i5 saves to SAVFs or maybe virtual tape and move
them to the NAS and back up the NAS.  Ditto any other servers - back up
to the NAS and go to tape from there.  Basically a disk-to-disk-to-tape
without special hardware.  Or use the NAS as the primary storage for
your other servers.

Or, if you add an 0595 to your i5 config you could also add an IxS for
not much more and get an integrated Windows or Linux server.  While the
IxS hardware isn't cheaper than an entry Windows box, it has no hardware
maintenance cost and is generally very cheap to admin since most things
are handled on the i5/OS side.

Is your existing system full of cards to the point that you'll need
another frame anyway to add the NAS connection?  You don't want the NAS
traffic on the same Ethernet (if using Ethernet vs. Fibre or iSCSI) port
you use for user connections.

It can be hard to figure out, especially if you don't know what your
admin costs will be for the NAS.

Does performance matter?  While the NAS can be speedy, the 27xx RAID
cards have that huge cache.  NAS will be limited by interface speed (Gb
Ethernet, iSCSI, Fibre), RAID card cache & speed (some low-end cards are
rather slow at RAID5 calculations), and type of drive used (7200 RPM is
common vs. the i5's 10K minimum disk speed).

What level of downtime is acceptable?  Does your network have open ports
for the NAS to use or do you need to buy more?  Is your equipment rack
full?  What's the extra cost of off-siting NAS backups in addition to
your i5?  Do you control your DR environment -- what's your cost to
build & maintain NAS vs. internal DASD in your DR environment?

i5 DASD:
Capital:
 0595 chassis if needed (+ associated things like HSL cables)
 27xx RAID card if needed
 2 300GB 10K SCSI disks (configure as mirrored) (if you need more than
300GB, do 4+ 300GB disks and go RAID5 so you can expand the array disk
by disk as needs grow)
 Additional capacity on DR system to hold the data - hardware config
basically doesn't matter
Operating:
 Additional power + HVAC
 0595 chassis maintenance

NAS:
Capital:
 NAS device
 Backup device
 Fibre, iSCSI, or Gb Ethernet card for i5
 Staff training on NAS admin/support (optional but recommended; may be
operating vs. capital especially if 'training' is merely RTFM)
 Replicate NAS (or equivalent capabilities) in DR environment
Operating:
 Additional power + HVAC
 NAS device maintenance
 Backup device maintenance
 Additional tapes
 Administration expense (staff time needed to admin/troubleshoot the NAS
& connectivity issues, additional backups to oversee, more in-depth
checking of updates from IBM & the NAS vendor to ensure updates won't
break the config, etc.)
 Documentation updates: procedures, BC/DR, etc.  Don't forget to test!

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx