So my company is looking to switch to a DAS San storage system for our internal fileshare. I'm wondering if there are any great tutorials detailing how to set this up and what kind of equipment I'll need to buy?
Edit
My question was conflicting so let me make it a little more clear. I'm needing to build a direct-attached storage system for our internal fileshare. We're currently using an XServe and the AFP protocol. It works great, but we're running out of room and the idea of a San-esque service was appealing because I could (in my mind at least) keep adding drives to it as we needed and it would expand the virtual volume.
Any suggestions on where to go from here?
Thanks!
Answer
I agree with Sven- don't use apple hardware for storage. Now you're talking about "SAN-type" storage, however that means different things to different people. I'm going to assume you like the fact that it's centralized, highly available, high performance, and expandable. I'm not going to assume that you need disk level access to it because that's something you see in the requirements of databases, not macs.
Your best bet would be a NAS. Avoid AFP and go with NFS, which mac OSX uses perfectly. The advantage of NFS is that it opens you up to a wide array of NAS vendors that could do the job.
NAS hardware comes in a spectrum from grungy little 4 drive garbage cans to Netapp filers. The more you spend, the more expandable and highly available it'll be.
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