Hi All,
We are in the process of doing a complete system upgrade on our backend system for the company that I work. We have decided to go for a virtualized system with the following design.
3 VMware hosts connected to a SAN and a separate server to do the backups.
The design is relatively locked and all the parties involved are quite happy with it. The only point of contention id whether to use SAS or fibre for the connection from the hosts to the SAN.
The fibre connection will be 2 x dual port 8 GB hba’a per host, connected to 2 fibre switches and in turn the SAN is connected via 2 X 4 port 8GB fibre units to the 2 switches. So all is very redundant and scalable.
The SAS design is 2 SAS HBA’s per host and 2 X 4 ports on the SAN. This does limit the scalability of the SAS network. This is because of the lack of a switch.
I have seen on the interweb that you can get a SAS switch.
So the question is,
- Can you scale the SAS network like you can with fibre?
- Does the SAN switch work the same a fibre switch?
- Is there anyone that has had experience with using SAS in this way?
- And finally, is there any literature on SAS vs fibre as host to SAN connection.
- Any valid reason to either not use SAS or fibre?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
We are in the process of doing a complete system upgrade on our backend system for the company that I work. We have decided to go for a virtualized system with the following design.
3 VMware hosts connected to a SAN and a separate server to do the backups.
The design is relatively locked and all the parties involved are quite happy with it. The only point of contention id whether to use SAS or fibre for the connection from the hosts to the SAN.
The fibre connection will be 2 x dual port 8 GB hba’a per host, connected to 2 fibre switches and in turn the SAN is connected via 2 X 4 port 8GB fibre units to the 2 switches. So all is very redundant and scalable.
The SAS design is 2 SAS HBA’s per host and 2 X 4 ports on the SAN. This does limit the scalability of the SAS network. This is because of the lack of a switch.
I have seen on the interweb that you can get a SAS switch.
So the question is,
- Can you scale the SAS network like you can with fibre?
- Does the SAN switch work the same a fibre switch?
- Is there anyone that has had experience with using SAS in this way?
- And finally, is there any literature on SAS vs fibre as host to SAN connection.
- Any valid reason to either not use SAS or fibre?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.