1. I would not trade shared storage to go back to DAD (direct attached disk) ever.
I have been there and don’t want to go back. Shared storage has allowed me to reduce footprint and stop waste. Power, heat and space to start. Ever hear of server sprawl?

2. Maybe if your world doesn’t require TB and TB of storage you may not need a SAN… But In my opinion once you hit Medium biz you should be needing some sort of shared storage. If you are a small biz with you may still need shared storage.

3. Why hate on shared storage? I don’t get it, with all of the benefits of shared storage that make my job easier I can’t fathom why one would bash it. Oh sure, some solutions are too expensive but their are ways to fix that problem. I’ve done it so I know.

4. Yes, IT pros want the “Big boy” toys. I’ve seen folks had over hard earned money to Storage Vendors before and I likely will continue to see this. But this is not a reason to think you don’t need a SAN. If you don’t need a SAN you should know this already.

5. Virtualization likely requires a SAN. Now Microsoft has done something that is interesting and that’s the ability to Live-Migrate (vmotion for you ESXi only folks) in a shared nothing infrastructure. This is really the 1st stone I might be willing to stand on if your so Anti-SAN. But…. Your going to be buying a lot of hard disks because you need to have room to put your VM’s on each host you want to move to. Your also likely going to start looking at windows clusters for everything you care about… So your going to eat up Microsoft licenses fast.

6. Let me ADD to my 5th comment: your just shifting your spending $$ to other places. Your going to have more servers with more disk and RAM and to accomplish the same HA your going to waste $ on disk and RAM not is use if you expect to provide an environment that stays up. Your going to see a higher power bill and your going to have to spend more money on physical infrastructure. Your going to spend more on network just to plug everything in.

Look, if you have less than 50 servers you likely can get away without buying a SAN. But at some point you should realize you could do better with one(or many) and less “STUFF.” How many servers before you say you need it I’m not going to say. Why? Because their is more at play here, HA is about the total environment and that may be out of the scope of this author. DR and Business Continuity usually has Shared Storage as part of the equation for some specific reasons. One to mention is the WAN. Most companies hate to talk about WAN costs. Some try’s and use site to site VPN and large internet pipes. (Start at 100meg and work your way up) but when you have TB’s of stuff to protect that isn’t going to cut it. So you buy a shared disk solution to add on the storage replication solution you can afford.

Please understand there are a lot pieces in play here. The author should really point who the audience is here. I can tell you it’s not me nor the companies I work(Ed) for and it certainly doesn’t seem relevant to the companies I will likely work for in the future.

This post may fit for the SMALL biz but it really fits for the SMALL IT shop. That’s not where I want to be. I did that and I don’t want to go back.

While I can see how you can take it that way, the first half does address the reality that many IT professionals (or the company’s non-technical “IT guy”) are often asked to perform projects they simply are not equipped to do. SAN and VMware are often sold hand in hand by vendors, and marketing reflects this. Even we are not immune to the latest fad or prestige of “running a SAN”.

I’m currently writing a whitepaper on SMB iSCSI SAN and this blog has been very helpful to explain when exactly a SAN is appropriate. Kudos to the author!