Service overview | Who can use it | How to request & access | Cost | Availability | FAQs | Best practices & policies | Training & documentation | Support
Service overview
IT Services provides SAN (Storage Area Network) service for either block storage via fiber channel (FC) or file storage via NFS export or CIFS share to servers.
The storage service offers performant storage: Storage providing greater than 2500 IOPS and better than 15ms response time. It is typically recommended for very active file or database data.
Service inclusions
36 month storage lease that includes:
- Block or file storage as required
- Data backups with five (5) week retention (one full backup per week and daily incremental backups other days of the week) with the capability to perform a file system restore
- Optional Data backups with five (5) week retention (One full backup per month and daily incremental backups other days of the month.) with the capability to perform a file system restore
- Biannual updates to the storage infrastructure
- Monitoring of SAN connectivity for block storage
- Monitoring of SAN performance
- Live migration(s) of data outside of regular business hours; if/as required
- Augmentation to existing storage pools previously purchased by a client
- Business resiliency against unscheduled service interruptions by use of:
- Global Active Device (GAD) technology to maintain active synchronous remote copy of data volume,
- multipath technology to prevent any one single path failure,
- RAID technology,
- storage pools,
- redundant components,
- all components reside in environmentally and security controlled facilities.
- Availability of IT Services to:
- expand block or file storage to meet the additional requirements of the client and will work with the client during the expansion,
- work with the client in addressing any block or file storage issue that may arise.
- One-time creation of a block or file storage if the client requesting it does not have an appointed, qualified System Administrator
- FC cabling for block storage from the server to the SAN
- IT Services will assist the client in the purchase of the multipath software should it be required (e.g. Veritas Infoscale)
Service exclusions
- Storage content management
- Storage capacity monitoring (It is the client’s responsibility to monitor their storage capacity to prevent file system corruption due to full storage capacity.)
- Performance tuning
- Data import or export assistance
- Access to SAN management tools
- Physical connection of any peripheral devices, servers or components of any kind to the SAN
- Physical access to any of the SAN infrastructure
- System Administrators
General requirements
- Clients need to have their own qualified System Administrator to fully manage storage on their server, which includes:
- The guest OS and all subsequent service packs or patches,
- All installed applications, monitoring and upgrades,
- Storage management within the OS, (i.e. HBA driver/software, multipath software, volume and file system management, etc)
- Updating storage management tools on the server upon request by IT Services personnel.
- Server(s) receiving block or file storage must reside in IT Services Data Centre
- For block storage:
- Server(s) require dual Fibre Channel (FC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) for connectivity to the SAN.
- HBAs must use a QLogic or QLogic-OEM FC HBA model QLE274x or higher.
- Minimum HBA port speed is 32Gb/s
- Minimum of 2 single port HBAs or 1 dual port HBA
- Server(s) must run vendor- and IT Services-supported multipath software versions.
- Qualified multipath software: Windows native mpxio, or either HDS HDLM or Veritas Infoscale for Windows, Linux, or Solaris
- Use a server OS that IT Services qualifies for end-to-end vendor support.
- Note: current OS support includes Windows 2016/2019/2022, Linux RHEL 7/8/9, Solaris 10/11 - Subject to change as OS support evolves with vendors.
- For file storage:
- Server(s) cannot require dedicated IP network connections to support file storage.
- If a dedicated IP network connection is used for the file storage, the client will incur an additional charge for each extra network connection.
- Server(s) can have a single IP connection supporting the file storage. Note: this would require downtime during infrastructure maintenance windows.
- Server must run NFS v3 or NFS v4, or SMBv2 or higher
- Note: if server runs NFS v4, downtime would be required when infrastructure migration is required
- Any server OS that supports the above file storage protocol versions can be used.
Additional information
- Block and file storage can be expanded (increased in size) but not reduced/shrunk.
- The client is solely responsible for volume or file system management on their server.
- IT Services is not responsible for data corruption. It is the client's responsibility to protect the data either via IT Services Backup Service or on their own.
- There is a possibility that the required storage could be mounted on an IT Services Departmental server avoiding the additional cost of a server.
- Windows MSCS, Veritas Cluster Server, and Oracle RAC cluster configurations are supported for block storage.
- Scheduled server downtime at a minimum of twice a year to update the server’s SAN software and hardware drivers. (i.e. multipath software, HBA driver and firmware)
- IT Services reserves the right to request a scheduled server downtime to migrate storage to new disk arrays if/when infrastructure components are upgraded.
- IT Services is solely responsible for vendor support with respect to the SAN.
Who can use it
All McGill staff and affiliates are entitled to use this service.
How to request & access the service
Please fill out the request form: New custom virtual machine.
Cost
Refer to Rates and Prices for Data Products and Service.
Availability
The Data Centre facilities operate 24 X 7 X 365.
Frequently Asked Questions
None available.
Best practices & policies
None available.
Training & documentation
Not applicable.
Support
Contact the IT Service Desk.