Stornext

[Edgar Pitts]

We are looking at a SAN for our new office, and our rep is suggesting Stornext software. It is considerably more expensive per seat than MetaSAN, but we are told that is far superior.

Does anyone have real world experience with the product?

Thanks.

Edgar

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Stornext is licenced by Apple to become Xsan. I'd phone up Metasan and ask them about their product. I've personally found it very good.

Graeme

 

[Mike McCarthy]

We have had MetaSAN here for over a year now. It is not perfect, but its feature set is amazing. The accelerated network sharing really pushes our dollar farther with our infrastructure investments. (MetaLAN) Our biggest problem relates to the newest version having uninstall issues. If you are going to test it, I recommend 3.1 over 3.2. Hopefully 3.3 will solve the issue soon.

 

[Jeff Brue]

Metasan has issues, stornext has more. Either way 90% of your issues will be with how you set up port zoning.

 

[Edgar Pitts]

Thanks for the replies everyone. We are looking at the Rorke Aurora 22TB SAN.

Edgar

 

[warwickt]

FWIW: for single shared arbitrated file systems (SSAFS's) .. aka san file systems - just these non CFS systems.

Quantum's STORNEXT (ex CVFS and ye old cray) is the best single shared arbitrated file system (SSAFS) out there but aside from its expense and cumbersome installation procedure and trouble shooting, supported FC disk arrays + HBA's and needless or endless tweaking and limitations of amount of attached workstations, it is very good in the amount of heterogeneous file systems platforms it supports. It is very good in this regard. Quantum's expertise on this worldwide is relatively good. Like RORKE DATA it has a "network agent" as well. over UDP maybe.
 XSAN is STORNEXT under another mask.

Another is Tiger tech's METASAN is excellent.. not so much supported platforms.

Also look at Rorke data's IMAGESAN™ for a cheap LINUS , MAC OSX and windahs option. Their IMAGELAN™ UDP agent as well.

Another one is from SANBOLIC Melio™.. but only support of mr softee's windah's when I last looked. Melio FS I think it is called.

SGI's CXFS also has a good heterogenous SSAFS offering called CXFS. Lesser platforms as STORNEXT™. It does not support HPUX I recall but does support heterogeneous usage of  MAC OSX, Linux's, AIX, Solaris, windah's etc.. its rather good. Some limitation non SGI disk arrays though and HBA's .. you need to check.

THere's a few out there.. just have a look around including older offerings from IBM and others.

I guess it is as usual a business+workflow decision.
hth
w