RE: Active/Passive "high availability"

  • From: "Allen, Brandon" <Brandon.Allen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Jared Still" <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx>, <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:29:29 -0700

Summarizing all the below comments as (SAN = SPOF != HA), I would argue
that it depends on how you define "high availability".  The term is
inherently subjective.  Even if you are down 10 days a year, that is
still relatively "high availability" compared to being down 20 days per
year.  Certainly a fully redundant SAN with a competent admin is going
to be more highlier (obscure South Park reference :-) available than a
single spindle with no redundant components.  A careless, but efficient,
tech can bring down multiple SANs for quite a long time :-)
 

________________________________

From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx] 


Last time I looked, a mirrored disk resides in some type of disk farm.
SAN, NFS, whatever, it is a SPOF.

SAN failures are not exacly unheard of.
 
 No, it doesn't require multiple failures.  I am not a storage expert,
but having redundant components in a SAN does not make it HA.
It makes it more resistant to failiure, but it cannot be relied on 
to guarantee a high percentage of availability.

I have also seen SAN's fail more than once.

1 SAN = SPOF
 
 It isn't really necessary to have a physical disaster.

A careless tech can bring down your SAN for quite a long time.



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