The three most common issues in Storage Area Networks

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Simple configuration issues that impact your SAN performance

As an experienced maintainer of EMC and other SAN hardware, we see a lot of Storage Area Networks. While SANs may have been optimally configured at installation, their configuration and use may have evolved over time and problems can creep in.  Our engineers have noticed significant numbers of SANs which are no longer configured in line with best practice. Many customers don’t realise that their SAN is not working at its optimum and may be unaware that they are running unnecessary risks with their data.

Here are the top 3 SAN issues we encounter.

  • LUNs bound to system drives. Drives 0-4 are reserved as system drives to run the array’s O/S. In 90% of the systems we check, we see these drives being used for mission critical storage. It’s a simple, basic error that impacts system performance yet only one in ten of the SANs we check is configured correctly.
  • Use of SATA drives for virtualization. Both EMC and VMWare advise against this practice, warning of the performance and throughput impact it has. Yet we see this being done in more than 70% of the SANs we check.
  • Poor metaLUN implementation. Configuring metaLUNs incorrectly can pose serious risks for data corruption through hardware failure. We see this in more than 60% of the SANs we check.

These are simple issues to correct but they often go unnoticed for years, until a problem arises and the data is corrupted or until we send an engineer to perform a SAN Health Check.

Make sure your SAN is in optimum health

Com-Com are offering a free EMC SAN Health Check to the first ten respondents to this email.

The health check consists of a day’s consultancy, worth £1,200, where one of our qualified engineers will come out to your site and run through a comprehensive audit schedule in order to identify any faults or areas for concern with your EMC storage array.

Within ten days of the site visit we will provide you with a full report of our findings, together with recommendations on ensuring your equipment is working to its optimum performance level.

Call us on 0845 643 1180 or click below to claim your free SAN Health Check.

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