Q: Starting a SAN

So my first response is that it sounds like you should be looking for a partner in the planning of this solution. Head over to http://training.apple.com/#certification and then click on the link for Find Certified Professional. On the search site, search by XSan 2 Administration. There are only 224 registered Xsan certified professionals worldwide. I suggest that you start by contacting one of us to start the planning phase of your deployment.

jadennh1 wrote:
I need to start building a SAN system in the next few years. I looked into the XSAN guides and find that I need a RAID, 2 metadata controller computers, ethernet switches, fibre channel switches, and client computers. I want to know what computers I can use as the metadata controllers, if I can use XServe for my RAID, and how to set up my 400 computers to this system, with a seperate computer with remote desktop to administer this SAN.

However, to start you out, you can use either Xserves or Mac Pros as the metadata controllers. If you are adding san clients, you are limited to Xserves and Mac Pros also (G5s should not be included if you are deploying Xsan 2.2 or higher). These two models are the only devices from Apple that can participate as SAN attached devices. Keep in mind that you can integrate StorNext systems into an Apple Xsan.

And no, you can not use the Xserve as RAID storage. All storage must be fibre channel storage. Promise is the only officially sanctioned storage vendor but products from Active Storage and others work just fine (in some cases better). The Xserves are best at metadata controllers. The Xserve architecture (dual power supply mainly) lends itself to this role because of component redundancy.

It sounds like you have the foundation of a great project on hand. Best of luck with it. I hope this helps you get started.

you may would like to look at iStoragePro, they offer fibre channel subsystem and sas jbod,
http://www.istoragepro.com/prod.php?id=ir16sae
http://www.istoragepro.com/prod.php?id=ir16fc4er

these works great, very high quality.