Lion XSan or StorNext Upgrade?

cinedigital · RAID 5 Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 17

I'm looking at upgrading an existing small StorNext 3.5.1 SAN (RHEL 5 MDC & W2K8 Client) so that 5 Lion MacPro's can acces the 3 SAN volumes via Fibre Channel

The software is out of mainenance and the costs to upgrade StorNext to a version suitable for Lion's XSan client are quite high

It looks like an alternative would be to migrate to a XSan MDC running on a beefed up MacMini or s/h XServe

To keep filesystem compatability, would the migration first have to be done to V2.2 on Snow Leopard & then upgraded to Lion?

Would the W2K8 licence need to be replaced by a StornextFX licence or does a full StorNext licence also work with XSan?

Anyone have any thoughts about migrating from StorNext to XSan rather than the reverse?

TIA
Dave

matx · Xsan Master Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 378

Lion (10.7) Xsan controllers are compatible with StorNext FS 3.5.3 or StorNext FX 2.2 clients:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1517?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

cinedigital · RAID 5 Joined: 30 Apr 2008 Posts: 17

Thanks matx, would StorNext subscription be needed to upgrade to 3.5.3 or is a point release upgrade covered by the existing license?

matx · Xsan Master Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 378

Not sure about that. Contact Quantum or your reseller. If you have no luck getting those point release updates let me know. Maybe we can find some helpful people at Quantum.

keithkoby · Xsan Master Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 140

Quantum is a pain with support. Nothing but drawn out (somewhat) annoying experiences so far with me. They won't give you any software upgrades, point or no point without an active maintenance contract. However, you might be able to get the little maintenance contract thats only a couple hundred bucks in order to get access to the upgrades.

Good luck.

abstractrude · Xsan Master Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 865

quantum sucks. especially customer service. its like its your fault for being their customer.

daver · fully protected Joined: 29 Jun 2008 Posts: 10

Just been through the process of adding a stornext license to our existing xsan+stornext setup. While the people we dealt with were polite and reasonable, actually buying something from Quantum is worse than getting through a TSA body grope. They start with the assumption that you are a criminal trying rip them off and you have to prove to them that you are worthy to be a customer. When you finally receive your license codes your problems are just beginning. Because you know, if you already have a stornext license you can't just buy another one. You have to have the licenses "linked" or they won't work. But you won't find this until after you spend 2 days configuring everything and wondering what you did wrong and then filing a support incident and then being told you shouldn't do that because the licenses aren't linked. Oh, you think I shoulda read the docs. The docs don't exist. Or are secret. Or something.

Stornext software works, but Quantum's sales and support processes are looney tunes, batshit crazy stuff. Took me a month to purchase and install the second license, and only 10 minutes of that was actual productive work.

We won't be dealing with them again.

-Dave

aaron · Site Admin Joined: 19 Mar 2005 Posts: 405

I understand the frustration with Quantum support. Would it be help things if we could get someone from Quantum to be on the Xsanity forum? I have a possibility for doing this.

Thoughts?
_________________
Aaron Freimark
http://www.tekserve.com/vcard/af.vcf

keithkoby · Xsan Master Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 140

Hey Aaron,

It might be helpful. But, it seems to me that the support access was quite draconian and they'll only want to disseminate helpful information to paying support customers (rather than free helpful info to joe-forum member).

Keith

MattG · Xsan Master Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 456

It seems Quantum wants to start its own online community...

http://stornextforum.com/