Re: Benefit of Multiple Disks in SAN Environment

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Greg Linwood (g_linwoodQhotmail.com)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 15:02:23 +1000

Hi Brad

I'm not sure if Veritas is actually required for dual HBA, but one bit of
advice I'd give is that if you have the luxury of a team who are committed
to "supplying full bandwidth all of the time" as you originally suggested,
then simply take them up on that committment and measure their performance
by monitoring i/o queues from the Windows O/S performance counters. If they
configure the disks in a manner that they aren't keeping up with SQL's i/o
requests, simply nail them to their SLA. That way, you concentrate on the
core SQL admin tasks and don't have to worry about configuring disks, which
seems like it's really someone else's job, right?

Regards,
Greg Linwood
SQL Server MVP

"Brad" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1b3beb54b3925e2698bdb8@news...
> In article <#22OCRKVEHA.1164@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>,
> GregoryAJackson@hotmail.com said...
> > I'm not a SAN expert, but I still believe that seperating volumes is
wise
> > (Even if it's only logical).
> >
> > FWIW: We are doing the same thing right now and our SAN dudes have
> > recommended Seperate volumes
> >
> > we are going to a HITACHI XP Solution.
>
> We are on a Hitachi system as well for our high performance disks. The
> bulk of our non-SQL data is on an EMC Clariion ATA-based system. Even the
> ATA system keeps up with the 1Gb HBA that accesses it with no problem. Of
> course, there are a lot more disks that make up those volumes.
>
> We get the disk space in 36GB chunks. Should I just have them presented
> as 36GB disks or should I use 1 36GB chunk for my transaction log
> (anywhere from 1-8GB) and use the rest as one big volume for my data?
>
> My other issue is with using a dual path HBA. The datacenter's standard
> is still 1Gb for the SAN, but they will be upgrading. They recommended a
> dual connect HBA, but in order to use that with simultaneous connections
> on Win2K3 they say I need Veritas Volume Manager. Is this true?

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