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FASTCache with NS120 query
Hello
Customer has enabled both FAST and FASTCache on their NS120. We have a DAE of 2TB SATA drives, and DAE-OS with Vault pack+Hotspare+3 SATA SSDs and 6 FC 450GB disks. NAS 6.0 and Flare 30.
I had a look through DART FAQs which mentions i can use FASTCache for NAS LUNs and FAST is supported only on native FC/iSCSI and not on NAS Luns at present. Also, there was a knowledge base article mentioning how the Celerra-renamed-Luns will be ignored by Clariion during FAST, after checking the LUN names.
now some of my many questions:
1. is there a preferred way of provisioning (storage pools or Classic raid group) keeping future growth/enhancements in mind.
2. should i have individual storage pools for each disk types (i am thinking yes), so i can enable FASTCache on a pool level.
3. Will i be able to add more storage to, say my FC storage pool (which is provisioned to NAS) in the future, and use it for native FC/iSCSI.
4. If answer to 3 is yes, will i be able to make it a FAST pool - which will only do the tiering on LUNs used for native FC/iSCSI and leave the NAS Luns alone.
I am trying to find out if there are any benefits in keeping the NAS Luns and native FC/iSCSI in the same pool (in case we start supporting FAST for NAS Luns as well).
Or if it will make more sense to keep all NAS provisioining on seperate pool and just turn on FAST cache on them, and create new pools for native FC/iSCSI.
Any feedback appreciated.
thanks
Nathan
DaveZ1
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January 17th, 2011 17:00
OK I have a few answers but please note this is in context of hte config you have describesd, this is not a generic answer.
1. is there a preferred way of provisioning (storage pools or Classic raid group) keeping future growth/enhancements in mind.
Pools are definately the way of the future for simpler provisioning. if, however, you are comfortable with CLI and consider yourself a RAID ranger and want to squeeze out every last IOPS frorm your rig, then classic RAIDgroups, being simpler from a code perspective, give a bit more performance.
2. should i have individual storage pools for each disk types (i am thinking yes), so i can enable FASTCache on a pool level.
In this case, yes -- individual pools or RAIDgroups, since you have NAS and NAS does not as yet support a heterogenous pool
3. Will i be able to add more storage to, say my FC storage pool (which is provisioned to NAS) in the future, and use it for native FC/iSCSI.
No, the NAS code 'consumes' the pool, it cannot be shared with block storage.
4. If answer to 3 is yes, will i be able to make it a FAST pool - which will only do the tiering on LUNs used for native FC/iSCSI and leave the NAS Luns alone.
No, and note Celerra does not yet support a heterogenous pool.
I am trying to find out if there are any benefits in keeping the NAS Luns and native FC/iSCSI in the same pool (in case we start supporting FAST for NAS Luns as well).
Well we will at some point support tiered storage for Celerra. But not sure about sharing pool with Celerra side and block -- at least not in this generation. I'd plan for 2 pools, minimum, for now
Or if it will make more sense to keep all NAS provisioining on seperate pool and just turn on FAST cache on them, and create new pools for native FC/iSCSI.
That to me makes the most straightforward solution, use the SSD for FAST Cache.