Xraid is set up as a SAN?

[NoSpin]

Dear All

I currently provide IT Services to approximately 100 users of iMacs, eMac and Powerbooks and am looking at our future requirements, as we are moving buildings and will have the space/environment for an xRaid. Currently we have 4 OSX 10.3.8 server servers (Dual G5 2ghz) and a FileMaker server:

Open Directory Master

Firewall and VPN Server

Mail and Web Server

Users and Groups Server

FileMaker (5 currently – moving to 7) Server – OSX 10.3.8 Client (moving to OSX Server)

With data on the machine’s boot drives backed up to tape every night.

Gigabit Ethernet backbone.

We are migrating all the users to Managed Mobile Accounts and are adding more Network home users.

Ideally I’d like to get the mail server folder, the web-server folder, users and groups and the filemaker data onto an Xraid and have the various servers read and write to the xRaid. Seems this could substantially improve reliability, improve recovery from a failure, substantially improve backup reliability, centralise the data for easier admin….

Looking at the Apple Enterprise Backups solutions document it looks as if this is possible if the Xraid is set up as a SAN.

Does anyone have views on this?

Does anyone have any idea whether FileMaker 7 Server will like this set up?

Am I barking up the wrong tree completely.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank AFP548.com and all is contributors for their invaluable contribution to the OSX Server cause.

Steve

[andrina]

Xsan should do everything you’re looking for here – with a few points to ponder though – I assume only one of your servers is acting as an OD master? Are your other servers simply connected tot he directory structure, or are they replicas? I would make at least one of your other servers an OD replica.

Firewall should be set up on every machine if you don’t have a main firewall that all your traffic goes through at the moment – this is probably a bigger concern that you’ll want to speak to a networking guru about… the same goes for VPN – VPN hardware may be a better solution – otherwise, you may want to setup a machine as a failover for your VPN server, depending how crucial VPN is of course.

Mail and Web data should be fine on xsan – I haven’t personally tested this however.

I believe there was some hesitation about putting users home directories on an xsan volume – however, I don’t know if this hesitation was solely for directly attached clients, or if it applies to an xsan volume shared over AFP. The best way to find out, is of course going to be testing it.

FileMaker should be able to handle having it’s data on an xsan volume, but I’m sure a support question to FileMaker wouldn’t be a bad idea – a quick search for Xsan on FileMaker’s website yielded no answers for me.

Otherwise, there is also an Apple hosted mailing list for xsan (http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/xsan-users) with an awful lot of knowledgeable posters who may have already done exactly what you’re looking for.

Cheers,
Andrina

[Author]

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