How to access SAN?
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Hi Gurus,
We have SAN connected to our network but no one seems to know any details about it. How to access SAN? How to get its IP address? or is there other means to connect to HP SAN P2000 to gain access to its data or to the device so we can re-purpose if possible.
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Check your windows servers for software called (iSCSI Initiator) in:
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools
It if asks to start service, that means it is not connected to that machine, eventually one machine will have this already setup and you will see the target+ip
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Added tags.
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@bishnitro said in How to access SAN?:
or is there other means to connect to HP SAN P2000 to gain access to its data....
As a SAN, the only way to access the data is to mount it as a drive somewhere and copy the data off. Think of it as a big hard drive.
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@bishnitro said in How to access SAN?:
...HP SAN P2000 to gain access to its data or to the device so we can re-purpose if possible.
The P2000 is possibly the worst storage device on the market. Failure rates are through the roof (there are more known failures from the Spiceworks community usage of it alone to do this - it fails more often in a tiny subset of people we know with it than there should be in the total pool of all devices ever sold!) and it has no protections. The risk of it is so high, there is no deployment of it that is possible. Even in a lab, it would be pretty much pointless.
This is the device we talk about all of the time. It's a DotHill product rebranded as HP then sold into HPE with the split. Everything that can be wrong with a SAN is wrong here. Slow, risky, complicated. You literally get better results with things like Synology, ReadyNAS even Buffalo, Thecus or QNAP. And none of those would I ever use as a production SAN, but they are all better.
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I wasn't able to find the server that using the SAN but i was able to find the SAN's IP and was able to login. Its using the default password. How to browse the data or files?
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@bishnitro said in How to access SAN?:
I wasn't able to find the server that using the SAN but i was able to find the SAN's IP and was able to login. Its using the default password. How to browse the data or files?
Like I said above, this is a SAN, so the only way to see the files is to mount the LUN on a normal computer. A SAN operates like a big hard drive. No SAN device can see its own files, just like you can see the files by looking at a hard drive. Treat the SAN like a hard drive.
To see the files on a hard drive, you have to plug it into a computer (desktop, server, doesn't matter) and mount the drive, then open it regularly. Exactly the same with a SAN. Just "plugging in the drive" is "attaching the iSCSI".
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The SAN is actually connected to powered OFF server via SAS cable. Can i use the SAN only like usual NAS via IP then folder mapping? Or i need to power up the server it was connected and share from there?
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The interface should show you which initiators are connected.
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@bishnitro said in How to access SAN?:
The SAN is actually connected to powered OFF server via SAS cable. Can i use the SAN only like usual NAS via IP then folder mapping? Or i need to power up the server it was connected and share from there?
Oh, this is a DAS model? That means it is just a bit SAS drive. Just plug it in to any SAS connection.
SAN and NAS are totally different things. They work nothing alike.
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@bishnitro said in How to access SAN?:
Or i need to power up the server it was connected and share from there?
SAN / DAS / disks are not "sharing" things. NAS are for sharing. So if you want to "share" something on a SAN, DAS or hard drive you have to mount it to a file server or NAS and share from there.
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The use of this device by people who don't understand it is very dangerous to your data. You should really consider hiring a firm that can train you on how to use it if not manage it completely for you. You might find that it's better to just give up on this probably older piece of gear and get a new NAS or but a SAM-SD for your storage needs.
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@dashrender said in How to access SAN?:
The use of this device by people who don't understand it is very dangerous to your data. You should really consider hiring a firm that can train you on how to use it if not manage it completely for you. You might find that it's better to just give up on this probably older piece of gear and get a new NAS or but a SAM-SD for your storage needs.
Anyone qualified to work on it will demand that it be removed. No amount of training makes that device production ready. Just have someone access the data, copy it off and decommision that junk. Have a storage engineer spend four hours of time assessing the needs and telling you what makes sense to buy in the future.
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@scottalanmiller said in How to access SAN?:
@dashrender said in How to access SAN?:
The use of this device by people who don't understand it is very dangerous to your data. You should really consider hiring a firm that can train you on how to use it if not manage it completely for you. You might find that it's better to just give up on this probably older piece of gear and get a new NAS or but a SAM-SD for your storage needs.
Anyone qualified to work on it will demand that it be removed. No amount of training makes that device production ready. Just have someone access the data, copy it off and decommision that junk. Have a storage engineer spend four hours of time assessing the needs and telling you what makes sense to buy in the future.
So much this. I am stuck with two of these things until our vmware platform is completely down.
We have the iSCSI model. Just to reiterate how bad these things are: last Thursday one of the units controller A dropped the flash card. While it was failing over to controller B it locked up. Had to.completely down the platform and reseat all cards and controllers. I know I have good backups, that is the only reason I can somewhat sleep at night, that and all "production" applications are already moved to XenServer.
Take the advice of others, get some chain and make it a boat anchor.
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Have you installed CMC? It should find it by scanning the subnet.
