Well, after two days of serious work getting the cabling and power ready, EMC came out and spun up the Symm today.
Hot damn! Finally some real storage and I can start planning the migration off the stupid Clariion. 😉
One down-side though, the Multiprotocol cards they shipped were the wrong type, since we have an M2 model DMX, the RDF cards were apparently shipped for an M1.
I have a question for anyone bored enough to be reading this.
Can anyone see any reason why 62.5micron fibre is used? There is no signal-to-noise difference that I can see, and the range is not quite as long as the 50micron. Our Network guy swears by the 62.5 and I keep telling him he’s on crack.Â
However, thanks to the fact that he’s the one that designed the infrastructure, the links that go from the new datacenter to the old are all 62.5, and now I’m waiting on CDW to overnight me 6 new 10meter 62.5 micron cables to hook the new SAN into the old SAN so I can get the clariion migrated.
Always an adventure. 🙂
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3 comments
1 ping
Jesse, According to my own notes 50micron cable has higher bandwidth and lower attenuation than 62.5. However, Im not a network person and my own notes were made from back when I was studying up on fibre channel two or three years ago.
Another thing Ive noticed from experience is that network people seem to favour 62.5 as well as LC connectors over SC connectors. Im pretty sure this is just because they are used to that from their Cisco type networking background that predominantly used 62.5 and LC connectors.
Nigel
Price is the only advantage 62.5 has ever held over 50u. And just so you know, as it currently stands, 8Gb is going to REQUIRE 50u, so you might want to smack your “network guy” over the head a couple times before he makes any future purchases. I doubt you want to have to re-run all your cable in 4 years 🙂
Author
Too bad we just spent a quarter of a million on a cabling infrastructure. The good news is that *ALL* of the SAN storage (minus the cross-building links) is 50u, so that means that while the network end of things will have to be ripped out at some point in the near future, the FC should be fine.
[…] Deni OConnor of Network World published a list of top 10 storage network blogs. In his view these were the best of the storage industry vendor and Industry Analyst blogs. Thank you Deni and Network World for including me on this list but I think it is important to include the community of data storage bloggers as a whole. To me the value of blogs is in harnessing the thoughts and opinions of a community of storage practitioners, observers, and experts so that we can better understand and anticipate the demands of this market, the relevance of different technology and solution approaches, what’s good, what’s bad, what doesn’t matter, and what should be. No one blog has all the answers, but the intersection and dialogue that is generated by this community will make us all smarter.   The blogs that I appreciate are the ones posted by individuals who have no vendor involvement. Who express their opinions honestly and openly, based on their first hand experiences and observations. I appreciate it when they take the time to comment on my post, to tell me where I am off base and when I am on, or just to exchange thoughts. Many data storage bloggers are listed on a data storage wiki that was started by Jeremiah Owyang . This wiki groups the bloggers by the following categories: Storage Practitioners, Storage Admins, and Consultants. These are the real hands on users, the ones that I really learn the most from. One blog that I follow closely is Ruptured Monkey which has a number of end user forums and contributors, like SNIG, Macken, Nigel Poulton. Others that I follow in this category are Anil Gupta , Chris Evens , Ben Rockwood and Martin Mckeay on storage security. It was valuable for me to follow snig’s posts on his experiences installing an HDS USP. I also learned a lot from SANGod, who posted his experiences upgrading an EMC Clariian to a DMX. Storage Analysts, Authors and Experts, This is where you find the experts like Jon Toigo, Steve Duplessey, Tony Asaro, Chris Mellor, Robin Harris, and the Analysts blogs like Byte and Switch, ESG, Search Storage, Computer World and Network World. These are the ones who identify developing trends and provide timely analysis of the events that make up our world. Valuable information that we used to have to pay for is now freely available. One major analyst group is conspicuous by its absence. Vendors. Here we have nearly all the major data storage vendors, including HDS, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp, HP, SUN, VMWare, Dell, Symantec. There are also smaller vendors like Bocada, and Joyent. Joyent is part of the new web 2.0 data storage companies.  It is good to see a lot of the executive’s blogging, but I would encourage them to turn on their comments so that they can really be a part of the blogging community. Value Added Resellers and Consultants is another interesting community. Mike Linett from ZeroWait, Marc Farley of Building Storage, and Dez Blanchfield of Cradle Technology, currently fall in this category. The community of data storage bloggers is growing rapidly. Many of these individuals are so passionate about storage, they have multiple blogs and post multiple times a day. Who would have known that the world of data storage could generate such interest? I am sure there are a lot of other storage bloggers out there who aren’t listed in the Wiki. If you know of any, please add them to the storage blogger wiki or drop me a comment or link. […]