Storage Area Networks for Linux?

angelo asks: "Many of us have heard the buzz (on the radio of all places) about Storage Area Networks, or SANs. They are a method of accessing a common drive system, backing up information over a second network, and collaborating a server farm. My question is this: Can you connect a Linux box to a SAN network? If so, which SAN products support Linux connection and administration? Do all channel cards have drivers, some of them, or is it "in the works?"

duh...

[Zurk]

this is a slightly clueless post ... off the top of my head, nexsan (www.nexsan.com i think), western scientific (wsm.com), hp (may have? surestore?), artecon (LynxArray, LynxNSS) ..those were some i looked at for our backup system here anyway...ive got a complete list of Linux compatible arrays with drivers somewhere...its not that hard to find...and i searched around 3 months back. heres also a few links i have sitting around on my drive currently (from sun(?) i think) :
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Veritas Software Storage Foundation
http://www.veritas.com/product-info/foundation.htm
Legato Systems Backup Software Products
http://www.legato.com/Products/index.html
IBM Corporation/ADSM
http://www.storage.ibm.com/software/adsm/index.htm
Datalink Corporation specializes in the integration of information storage, high-availability, and
disaster-recovery solutions
http://www.datalink.com/frames/fr_prdcts.html
MTI Technology provides high-performance, cross-platform data storage management solutions
http://www.mti.com/products/index.htm
"Fibre Channel vs. SCSI: Which is more advantageous for your storage area network?" by Ron Levine
(SunWorld, March 1999)
http://www.sunworld.com/swol-03-1999/swol-03-fibre -scsi.html
For more storage-related stories, see SunWorld's Site Index
http://www.sunworld.com/common/swol-siteindex.html #storage

RE:

[lazlo]

We're running an NT SAN here, using the Vicom UltraLink 2000 SSA - SCSI routers. I know that they offically support Sun, HP, AIX, and several others, but the drives show up as SCSI ID/LUN. We've got the untralink's plugged into Adaptec cards. We haven't tried it, but there should be only a few problem with plugging this into a Linux box.

There are two problems that I see:

First, as the earlier poster mentioned, last time I checked linux assigns /dev/sda to the first scsi device it finds, /dev/sdb to the second, etc. I've never seen what linux does when, for instance, scsi id 5=/dev/sda and you add a device with id 3 and rescan the bus. Personally, I'd love to know what happens. It would be nice if there could be a switch from the way things are to a system more like (as I recall) Solaris uses which is not sequential, but definitive, i.e. incorporating into the device name the system bus/adapter/adapter bus/scsi ID/LUN. Of course that would be a pain for all of us that are used to the old way.

The second problem with the Vicom's is that you can only configure them from an NT box. In general this isn't too much of a problem, since you only set it up once, but if you really hate NT, it may be a problem.

They've got some interesting stuff. They are here [vicom.com].