Jurgen Haan wrote:
> Ian wrote:
>
>>
>> I've used NetApps at a few different customer sites. A couple of
>> things:
>>
>> 1) Assuming you're using it as a NAS (with SMB or NFS), make *sure* you
>> have the appropriate patches on your database server. Work with
>> NetApp to find the latest suggested patch levels.
>
>
> Well... iSCSI has crossed my mind
> Are there any signifigant performance differences between iSCSI and NAS?

There should be pretty significant performance differences. I haven't
used iSCSI, but iSCSI is a method for attaching the storage directly to
your server, like Fibre Channel, SATA.

NAS is a fileserver on your network that you connect to using TCP/IP
protocols like NFS or SMB.

>> 2) Make sure you have sufficient, dedicated network bandwidth between
>> the database server and the Filer. If you are thinking about using
>> Etherchannel (bonding multiple individual network connections into
>> 1 virtual connection), make sure you understand your vendor's
>> implementation of Etherchannel before going down this path.
>
>
> I was thinking of trunking the 2 1Gbit channels into 1 2Gbit.
> What use is a fast storage solution if you use a poor connection.

Again, I can't speak to iSCSI, but it is probably different than normal
ethernet.

Generally I have found that when using Etherchannel, the particular NIC
within the trunk is selected based on the destination IP address.
Therefore, if all traffic is going to 1 IP address (i.e. the NAS
server), then all traffic goes through one interface. Etherchannel
does have a different routing mechanism (round-robin), but using it
has never resulted in performance gains you might expect.