Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

Microsoft news and tips » Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:39:28 GMT

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re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

Brian Henderson — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:31:09 GMT

Good points, but you are still heavily on the "DAS side" - customers need an objective view of the total cost of ownership of an environment in terms of managing performance, scalability, backups, DR, archiving, and cost. In many cases, CCR/SCR environments require more servers/licenses and more disk (more floor/rack space too) than traditional SAN-based solutions.

I work at EMC so my viewpoint will be taken with a grain of salt, but I have yet to see a true objective comparison from anyone who is not Microsoft or a SAN vendor.

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

douggowans — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:44:40 GMT

Thanks for your comments - I do always try and be as objective as possible and will hopefully be spending some time with EMC to improve my own knowledge and hopefully objectivity.. It's a huge subject. My concern is really just having as much information as possible to hand to design a solution that is right for the customer...

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

Brian Henderson — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:38:50 GMT

Thanks for publishing my comments... and I fully agree. As with anything, the extremists get us in trouble. The DAS people saying "do it all on DAS you'll save money" and the SAN people saying "SAN is the best why would you want anything else."

I think companies (that I've spoken to at least) are simply looking for solutions to their problems and the majority of large Exchange storage deployments tend to go with SAN and the smaller ones are big fans of DAS. The companies in the middle are just plain confused :)

I do think the cost piece is a bit oversold, especially if the company already has a SAN.

Dynamic Disk Provisioning…

Dougs Blog... — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:35:04 GMT

Have been tracking a few internal discussions concerning dynamic disk provisioning – the idea of being

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

ricosuave — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:11:08 GMT

I am a Senior Project Manager with a long background of deploying SAP for Fortune 500 companies. I am also technically very astute (I used to be a prop head). I am now under contract with Transport Canada and we are going thru this argument right now for an environment of about 5500 users (probably about 90% concurrent) across Canada.

My Tech Lead is saying DAS with our Exchange consultant (who is published co-author in MS Exchange) and the WIntel guy is saying SAN (checking on why that is now).

Any new news on how to make this choice or is there an existing document or PowerPoint deck with an executive summary of Pros/Cons to each solution?

Thanks,

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

douggowans — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:49:14 GMT

This is the first place to start 'http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc500980.aspx'.. The situation you are describing is very typical. It is a bit of a change of direction not to place what is perceived to be a tier 1 app on tier 1 or tier 2 storage. If you don't properly understand Exchange 2007 then DAS would seem to be a very strange and risky decision. Have a look at the whitepaper above. DAS works for Microsoft and has worked out to be faster, easier to manage and much more cost effective and the document describes why..? Hope this helps.

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

ricosuave — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:34:56 GMT

Doug...

I had read this White Paper before I messaged you and while DAS looks pretty good, the the bench here is not that deep for a 5500 user environment I would have thought they would like the opportunity to have the Exchange guys being able to support the storage sub-system, but the Ops guys are leary.

That's why I was looking for a pros/cons matrix as to availability, acquisition costs, run costs, expertise required to support, blah blah blah. I have installed huge SANs on Fortune 500 SAP environments so I fully understand the concept of High-Availability, DR/BC infrastructures, and mission critical apps, but governments are more often concerned with costs that a private corporation. I am especially worried about on-going support with a SAN (although they have some expertise here).

Anyway, maybe one of your bloggers will have created a matrix like this and would like to share it. Thanks for your time, if you see anything please let me know or post it... I will check back frequesntly. If I have to create it (GROAN), I will fire it off to you.

Richard

re: Some more thoughts on SAN v DAS. Is it actually time to consider DAS?

douggowans — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:46:29 GMT

I don't know of such a thing Richard but I will ask around...