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Xserve RAID Question
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2003
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As you know, the Xserve RAID ships with (2) Fibre Channel ports on the back of it - one to each controller. The Fibre Channel cards Apple sells have (2) ports per card. So with that said, here are my questions:
- Can you order the (4) drive model and put (2) drives on each side of the array. Attach (2) different hosts to each side of the array, each one with it's own (2) drive RAID. Thus leaving one port on each host Fibre card unused. A (2) drive RAID is not very robust I know, not even sure what RAID levels would work that way offhand. In any event, I need to know if it's an option.
Other scenario...
- Can you put all the drives in one side of the array, slice them into (2) LUNs and connect (2) hosts to the array using a single Fibre connection per host? In this scenario, one controller with no drives on its' side would need to see the drives on the other side.
I guess what I'm really driving at is I have (2) hosts that need to access the same array and I don't have a Fibre switch. Having (2) LUNs is not a requirement, but having (2) hosts access the array is.
I'm thinking my alternative would be attach one machine to the array and share the volume with the other machine over GB Ethernet.
(Last edited by chrisutley; Jun 11, 2004 at 08:52 PM.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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Originally posted by chrisutley:
As you know, the Xserve RAID ships with (2) Fibre Channel ports on the back of it - one to each controller. The Fibre Channel cards Apple sells have (2) ports per card. So with that said, here are my questions:
- Can you order the (4) drive model and put (2) drives on each side of the array. Attach (2) different hosts to each side of the array, each one with it's own (2) drive RAID. Thus leaving one port on each host Fibre card unused. A (2) drive RAID is not very robust I know, not even sure what RAID levels would work that way offhand. In any event, I need to know if it's an option.
Other scenario...
- Can you put all the drives in one side of the array, slice them into (2) LUNs and connect (2) hosts to the array using a single Fibre connection per host? In this scenario, one controller with no drives on its' side would need to see the drives on the other side.
I guess what I'm really driving at is I have (2) hosts that need to access the same array and I don't have a Fibre switch. Having (2) LUNs is not a requirement, but having (2) hosts access the array is.
I'm thinking my alternative would be attach one machine to the array and share the volume with the other machine over GB Ethernet.
Yes, you can order the 4 drive model and put 2 drives on each side of the array. This would require RAID 1, so you would have 250 GB of storage "per side." You can't have unpaired drives (RAID sets are the only option) and as such with 2 drives you can only do a 2-drive mirror, but that's what you'd get -- 500 GB of total storage... 250 for one side and 250 for the other. Probably not worth it for $7000 :-) You could go a lot cheaper with external firewire drives, obviously.
You second suggestion is also an option -- Make a 4 drive RAID 5 set (giving you ~750 GB of storage) and have it directly connected to one machine, and AFP share it to the second.
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2003
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Thanks for the prompt reply.
So the option I floated where I have all 4-drives on one side of the RAID (sliced into 2 LUNs), and 2 hosts (one connected to each controller) won't work, right? I assume I could do something like this with a Fibre Channel switch, yes?
Originally posted by CatOne:
You second suggestion is also an option -- Make a 4 drive RAID 5 set (giving you ~750 GB of storage) and have it directly connected to one machine, and AFP share it to the second.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2001
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Originally posted by chrisutley:
Thanks for the prompt reply.
So the option I floated where I have all 4-drives on one side of the RAID (sliced into 2 LUNs), and 2 hosts (one connected to each controller) won't work, right? I assume I could do something like this with a Fibre Channel switch, yes?
Yes, you can do that with a FC switch. Note, FC switches start at around $4000, so if you're thinking of that price point you might as well go with at least 7 drives, and do 6+1 hot spare for the redundancy 
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