Storage Area Networks For Dummies®

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Part IV: SAN Management and Troubleshooting
2. Get someone who understands your entire computing environment.
If nobody like that exists, at least grab the heads of each department and
lock them in a conference room for a few hours. They need to understand
what one another’s issues are and what kind of applications they
need to support on the SAN.
3. After you have a good idea of how many servers and how much storage
you need — as well as how much information passes back and forth
between the servers and disk — you can design your SAN.
SAN engineers
SAN engineers, who actually build the SAN, should be skilled with hardware
and cabling. (These guys carry screwdrivers with them all the time.)
When you’re building your SAN, the engineers follow the established labeling
scheme according to your naming conventions (refer to “Labeling Your
Cables,” earlier in this chapter).You could also have your SAN vendor do the
installation, so finding engineers may not be an issue, depending on what
vendor you go with. (See Chapter 13 for some info on outsourcing and having
an outside vendor install your SAN.)
If you decide to put your SAN together yourself, someone who has a networking
background may be of help here. People with networking skills are used to
being around many boxes and wires, interconnecting them and making things
organized. (Well, not always, but sometimes.)
The infrastructure of a SAN usually stops at the HBA, which may be handled
by the server group itself or by a server vendor who is responsible for installing
and loading the drivers for any cards put into its boxes, depending on the
skill level of your server administrators and/or the warranty stipulations of
the server vendors. Many companies have service contracts that don’t allow
you to open and tinker with the hardware; they have their service technicians
make all modifications.
Also, most external SAN vendors — such as the switch and storage array vendors
— can’t touch the customers’ servers because of the liability concerns
of breaking something. Again, let the legally responsible party do its appropriate
tasks to keep from getting into trouble. The SAN group will still take on
the responsibility of configuring the HBA’s driver files, because those folks
know the exact settings for it and its drivers . . . or at least will communicate
closely with those who are responsible for installing the cards.