Building a four-node SAN cluster
I am planning to setup a SQL server on a four-node SAN cluster. I am being offered Fibre hubs and fire switches. What do you recommend and what are the pros/cons of each?

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I'm not sure what you mean by fire switches -- I assume you mean Fibre Channel switches. If it's between Fibre Channel and Firewire, use Fibre Channel and sleep at night.

Either hubs or switches will work. I don't know what hubs you are talking about but there aren't many on the market. If you use hubs, your SAN will be a stand-alone SAN or a subset of another SAN in the future.

I don't believe you can build an infrastructure with hubs. So if you are thinking you may want to expand this SAN into something bigger in the future, then go with switches.

Marc Farley

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This was first published in February 2004