| Author |
Message |
Harish
Guest
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 Posted:
Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:42 pm Post subject:
FC Switch Administration |
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In my company we have debate going on who should really manage FC
switch for SAN?. Network or Storage group?.
Cisco has stong hold in our company and they are pushing their FC
switches. They are claiming it should be managed by Network team.
We are also evaluating other FC switch vendors.
Brocade/Mcdata saying switches should be managed by Storage group.
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
Thanks
-Harish |
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Faeandar
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Jul 27, 2005 11:18 pm Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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On 27 Jul 2005 10:42:27 -0700, "Harish" <harish.mundre@gmail.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | In my company we have debate going on who should really manage FC
switch for SAN?. Network or Storage group?.
Cisco has stong hold in our company and they are pushing their FC
switches. They are claiming it should be managed by Network team.
We are also evaluating other FC switch vendors.
Brocade/Mcdata saying switches should be managed by Storage group.
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
Thanks
-Harish
|
If there is a dedicated storage group then they should be managing all
things storage, including the switches.
FC is *not* a network; it is a high speed, low latency serial
interconnect. It has some similarities to ethernet/IP but they are
not the same.
Who would maintain the storage? If not the networking group then
basically the core functionality of the SAN is not maintained by
storage. That seems completely unreasonable to me.
That would be akin to saying networking is responsible for the IP
network but they can't manage the switches. FC switches are a core
piece of the storage infrastructure and should be maintained by
whoever is responsible for the SAN.
~F |
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HVB
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:16 am Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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On 27 Jul 2005 10:42:27 -0700, "Harish" wrote:
| Quote: | In my company we have debate going on who should really manage FC
switch for SAN?. Network or Storage group?.
Cisco has stong hold in our company and they are pushing their FC
switches. They are claiming it should be managed by Network team.
We are also evaluating other FC switch vendors.
Brocade/Mcdata saying switches should be managed by Storage group.
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
|
Harish,
I suspect that you are witnessing a turf war. Cisco know that they
own the IP networks in your company. Brocade and McData have been the
traditional big 2 players in SAN switching, but they're losing ground
to Cisco.
In your case, Cisco know they have a foothold and they want your SAN.
Brocade and McData know Cisco have a foothold and they want your SAN
too. Cisco know that if your IP guys manage the storage switches,
they'll want Cisco equipment and it'll be very difficult to swap to
something else later.
Cisco also have other reasons for wanting the network guys to manage
the storage switches.
The command set used on the Cisco MDS SAN switches is loosely based on
Cisco IOS that your networks guys already know and (probably) love.
They look and feel very similar. The learning curve for a skilled
techie isn't too steep.
Also, any of the MDS SAN switches can accomodate IP blades, either for
iSCSI or FCIP - these are obviously IP related and will make a lot of
sense to your networks guys.
By contrast, there's very little similarity between your Cisco IP
switches and anything from Brocade or McData. You're probably far
better off having these managed by the storage team.
Cisco's agenda is to become the dominant player in the networking
world - IP and FC. They're pinning their success on product
similarity across the range. I wouldn't bet against them.
I don't often disagree with Faeandar, but in this case I have to say
that FC *is* very much a network.
Sure, it's a serialized protocol, but the addressing, routing and
classes of service make it very much a network. An FC network can be
made to encapsulate IP just as efficiently as it does SCSI-3.
I had a networks background before I got into storage (over 10 years
ago now). When FC came along (8 years ago, in my case) I found lots
of similarities with IP networking. Some of my non-networks
colleagues had a tough time getting the hang of it, as it was quite
different to the parallel SCSI and ESCON technologies they were used
to.
Finally... in reality either networks or storage *could* manage the
SAN switches. Which one is best for you depends on how well you get
on with the network people. Are they keen to talk to your storage
team?
General practice is for the storage team to manage the SAN and all
related equipment. I believe this line is going to blur... thanks to
Cisco.
Hope this is useful.
HVB. |
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Oracle
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:13 pm Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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Well, rather than directly answer your question I'll tell you a little about
the environment I work in. I'm a member of the storage management team where
I work and the scope of our work is right from the raw physical disk on the
storage array right to the filesystem on the particular host.
One of the many reasons for this was the need for end-to-end performance
management/responsiblity. Performance and functionality of a filesystem are
very much depending on all the underlying components. We are responsible for
providing not just storage but optimized and efficient storage and as such
it's important that we have direct visibility and control over things such
as DMP, BB Credits, Port utilization, ISL balancing, director traffic on the
storage arrays etc.
The last thing we need in our environment are "Oh it must be the network",
"It's not us, it must be the storage". Having control means we can provide
service levels at the filesystem.
Anyway, I guess my point is that it's easier to provide better service and
react and solve problems quicker when you can see and manage the whole
environment.
Just my 2 cents.
Brian.
"Harish" <harish.mundre@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122486147.438676.317500@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | In my company we have debate going on who should really manage FC
switch for SAN?. Network or Storage group?.
Cisco has stong hold in our company and they are pushing their FC
switches. They are claiming it should be managed by Network team.
We are also evaluating other FC switch vendors.
Brocade/Mcdata saying switches should be managed by Storage group.
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
Thanks
-Harish
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Dave
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Aug 06, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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| Quote: |
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
Thanks
-Harish
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My opinion: if your network group doesn't have access to a root
prompt or Windows administrator access, they are probably the wrong
people to be managing a SAN. That is, how clueful are they with respect
to disks and how the operating system uses them? If the answer is that
they don't understand this, they are the wrong people to be managing it.
You have to be able to understand the OS level presentation of
storage in order to manage it at the switch level, particularly with
multiple hosts, zoning and LUN security issues.
This sounds like Cisco's attempt to put your local Cisco folks in the
position of making the buying recommendation.
-- Dave |
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Rodrick Brown
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:31 pm Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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The most technical group in your organization should manage your SAN &
Switch infrastructure here it just happens to be the UNIX Engineering Group
:)
We had this turf war also but when it came to trouble shooting the UNIX
group was the logical choice as most critical systems were UNIX systems
anyway it just made sense :)
I know this might not fly in most organizations but it works very well here
:)
Network group manages the DWDM that our storage equipment plugs into but we
manage everything else.
"Harish" <harish.mundre@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122486147.438676.317500@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | In my company we have debate going on who should really manage FC
switch for SAN?. Network or Storage group?.
Cisco has stong hold in our company and they are pushing their FC
switches. They are claiming it should be managed by Network team.
We are also evaluating other FC switch vendors.
Brocade/Mcdata saying switches should be managed by Storage group.
What is advanatges/dis-advantages if FC switch is managed by Network
group.
Thanks
-Harish
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f0rd42
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:16 am Post subject:
Re: FC Switch Administration |
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I must agree with you other guys (well in the most points)
A SAN ist *not*comparable to a "normal" network, knowing a "LAN" only
helps to understand some of the FC concepts.
A network admin today stops looking for problems if the damned link
does not come up (unfortunately most of them), but this is where a SAN
guy need to look deeper, from the application through the OS, Switch
(and there is a lot in the switch to cause trouble) down to the storage
itself. FC is today, where IP was 10 Years ago.
leave it with either the storage or the unix guys.
Befor you start moaning, I am (still) a network guy doing a lot of
storage :-)
The only similarity between a cisco SAN switch and a Cicso LAN Switch
is the CLI, that's it!
only my opinion and what I've seen at our customers.
--
f0rd42
---
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results.”
Benjamin Franklin
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