iSCSI and Virtualization for File Share High Availability, no NAS needed
November 23rd, 2009When looking at centralized storage today, I still have customers and partners asking about NAS (File Shares) and if they truly need NAS in their environment to centralize and protect their file shares.
NAS is basically a Windows Server or a Linux Server running in a “black box” serving out or hosting files shares.
If you have a Windows Server today that you are using for Home Directory’s, File Shares, Group Folders, etc – that is basically a NAS “device”. Usually on a Windows Server, you are using it also for other roles.
If you are running NAS there are a couple things to think about:
- A NAS Solution doesn’t run anti-virus natively. In order to have anti-virus running and checking the files in a NAS environment, an Anti-Virus Server/Gateway is needed. Would you trust that Anti-Virus software is running on every end user computer that is accessing these file shares?
- NAS cost and software maintenance. When you break down the line item cost of NAS (CIFS and NFS licensing) along with software maintenance costs, this could cost $10,000 to $20,000 or more. A new Dell Server with gigs of memory, Windows Server and Anti-Virus can cost under $5,000
- Most everyone knows Windows Server, how to create file share, set permission, etc. A NAS Solution may require additional training and in a bigger environment if their is a SAN Administrator and a Server Administrator, the Server Administrator may lose control or go through additional steps when needing to create or modify file shares.
The reason customers may move to a NAS “device” and not use a Windows Server is for high availability, years ago Microsoft Clustering wasn’t as easy to configure as it is today.
Here is something else to think about since many of our customers are virtualizing their physical servers and applications today.
If you virtualize your Windows Server that is serving out or hosting file shares, your virtualization software has the functionality to create a “highly available file server” using for example, Hyper-V’s Live Migrate, VMware’s Vmotion and XenServer’s Xenmotion.
Using EqualLogic and your Server Virtualization Solution can save you additional cost, complexity, training, etc by creating a highly available file server for you.
