Hey Cisco! Where's my SAN blueprint guide?
- IT TOPICS:Storage
SAN design has some pretty straightforward basics for most mid-sized environments where you're not dealing with a lot of ports, even while a variety of switch and host choices and configurations exist. But as we're executing a storage implementation project, we have a real need today to identify long term expansion strategies, and a view into a much larger environment would assist our design and growth projection activities today.
So Cisco, where's my blueprint for SAN design?
I haven't found it yet if it's out there, maybe someone can point me to it if I'm missing it. I know the design expertise is there, and a webcast by Dan Hershey from Cisco over on Search Storage has some excellent overview material (Look for the session titled "How to Design the Fastest, Most Scaleable Enterprise SAN Architecture"). Maybe the best captured overview of the MDS and SAN design I've seen. Now where's my blueprint Dan?
Some of his material -
- Typical Cisco blueprint to network design, with recommendations around variations from small collapsed designs to large core-edge designs.
- Oversubscription rates and variations. Good material on host-disk fan out, and edge core fan out, even though real implementations may vary widely.
- VSAN featureset overview and roadmap, including T11 ratification discussion and planned future features for SAN-OS releases. Some of the more interesting near/longterm features including FC Backbone and NAT.
I was just bugging Dan for some of this type of material at SNW (I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with this), but this is rich material and just what I needed. Thanks Dan.

