Data sharing

Chris,

I currently have a 1TB SAN with three SUN E-class servers access. All volumes are shared so that each machine can "see" all disks over the fibre, however, I am unhappy with the performance of the Tivoli SANergy software. Is the Veritas SANpoint Foundation Suite any better?

For those who are unfamiliar with SANergy, it's an approach to data sharing in a SAN. The concept is a good one. Cross platform data access to the SAME data in a SAN, done at SAN speeds. The metadata and access control is done over the network, and the "read/write" access layer is done over the SAN. An agent can reside on every server that needs to be shared within the SAN. The agent "requests" access over the network, and once granted, the server reads or writes to the data over the SAN.

This is a current implementation of what a "global file system" promises. As far as performance, I would contact the vendor and let them size your environment properly. Your metadata servers may be overloaded, or your connectivity may have problems.

Veritas is a great solution also. Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to benchmark it against SANergy. My suggestion would be to try it, and see which one works best. Make sure your infrastructure is robust enough for your current environment though. This may be a tuning issue when all is said and done.

Chris