Is JBOD Considered a Type of RAID?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
I should add this is a Tier II I was talking to.
AKA Very, very junior.
This is Tier II... helpdesk?
He's at least 10 years older than me.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Tier II in a corporate environment doesn't really mean much. They don't get to touch alot of equipment and are usually somewhat of a horse with blinders on
Tiers in general mean nothing. I never saw any environment use them until I saw SMB communities talk about them. It is some weird thing that happens when small business isolated IT people try to extrapolate what they imagine enterprise IT must be like and this weirdness results.
I worked corporate (Lockheed Martin) IT Helpdesk and later Tier 2 priority management. Even the term management meant basically nothing. I just managed assigning tickets to other Teir 2 techs.
Low level corporate IT is tough. You tend to do things in a way that is so proprietary its not even funny. Yet you know nothing about the actual infrastructure. Almost all software is made in house or at least heavily modified.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Same tech was using the terms incremental and differential interchangeably, in terms of backups.
Yeah, sounds like Tier II is likely a post intern, but very junior position. Those are very basic terms.
He's one of the best we have on this product for Tier II. I was just surprised at the blatant ignorance on the basic term. Basically, that's what I don't want to become working proprietary software support. You get good at one or two products, but start losing your general IT grasps.
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@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Tier II in a corporate environment doesn't really mean much. They don't get to touch alot of equipment and are usually somewhat of a horse with blinders on
Tiers in general mean nothing. I never saw any environment use them until I saw SMB communities talk about them. It is some weird thing that happens when small business isolated IT people try to extrapolate what they imagine enterprise IT must be like and this weirdness results.
I worked corporate (Lockheed Martin) IT Helpdesk and later Tier 2 priority management. Even the term management meant basically nothing. I just managed assigning tickets to other Teir 2 techs.
Low level corporate IT is tough. You tend to do things in a way that is so proprietary its not even funny. Yet you know nothing about the actual infrastructure. Almost all software is made in house or at least heavily modified.
Most of the software my company sells was not made by them. They bought the company that produced it, they rebranded it, and now they train people to support it. So it's almost all secondhand training.
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Same tech was using the terms incremental and differential interchangeably, in terms of backups.
Yeah, sounds like Tier II is likely a post intern, but very junior position. Those are very basic terms.
He's one of the best we have on this product for Tier II. I was just surprised at the blatant ignorance on the basic term. Basically, that's what I don't want to become working proprietary software support. You get good at one or two products, but start losing your general IT grasps.
Like I said, things become so proprietary its not even funny. If you were to place this guy in a SMB environment, he would likely be lost
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I was really good friends with a guy when I first started at Lockheed Martin almost 10 years ago. We went to tech school together and I helped get him the job. He was a really bright guy. He stayed at Lockheed Martin's help desk and I moved in to a new, higher position every 2-3 years.
I met up with him recently and I can't believe how lost he was about everything. He is the best tech at the helpdesk, but all he knows is all that Lockheed Propriety software. He hasn't got a chance to practice networking, Windows Server (since 2003), or anything else that is actually useful everywhere else.
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@IRJ said:
I was really good friends with a guy when I first started at Lockheed Martin almost 10 years ago. We went to tech school together and I helped get him the job. He was a really bright guy. He stayed at Lockheed Martin's help desk and I moved in to a new, higher position every 2-3 years.
I met up with him recently and I can't believe how lost he was about everything. He is the best tech at the helpdesk, but all he knows is all that Lockheed Propriety software. He hasn't got a chance to practice networking, Windows Server (since 2003), or anything else that is actually useful everywhere else.
My EXACT fear staying where I am longer than I have to.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What you are selling is a disk shelf. It is just a shelf that holds disks, that's it. It's a dumb unit (literally, as in it contains no logic.) It is metal and cables. A JBOD shelf is something you can easily construct in your garage. It's only marginally able to be called a "device" as it is just a holding container for disks, their power and their cables. You could make one of these with a bunch of USB cables hanging out of the back and call it the same thing. It's little different than taking a wood box and putting slots in it to hold external drives and danging the USB connectors out the back. It will work, but who would use that in a business?
When people talk about DAS and SAN, they are talking "disk arrays", not "disk shelves." This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it applies ~99% of the time. If you make a SAN out of a JBOD you have a total disaster on your hands, but it can be done. The Netgear SC101 is the most ridiculous SAN unit ever, and that is what it was. To be an array means that the disks work together (RAID) and that means that the logic, the controller, is inside the disk array. So a disk array, as everyone who says DAS or SAN means to imply, always has a controller. A JBOD shelf lacks that controller.
I don't think I agree with you on this Scott. DAS, from my experience IS just a shelf of drives with either one or two scsi/SAS cables to a SCSI/SAS controller that is inside the server. The controller isn't in the external drive box. Though I will say I haven't dealt with this level of tech in quite some time, so perhaps it's changed and the controller is always in the external box now, but what would you be plugging into? Something in the PCIe slot I would assume - and what would that card be if not a controller?
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@thanksaj said:
@IRJ said:
I was really good friends with a guy when I first started at Lockheed Martin almost 10 years ago. We went to tech school together and I helped get him the job. He was a really bright guy. He stayed at Lockheed Martin's help desk and I moved in to a new, higher position every 2-3 years.
I met up with him recently and I can't believe how lost he was about everything. He is the best tech at the helpdesk, but all he knows is all that Lockheed Propriety software. He hasn't got a chance to practice networking, Windows Server (since 2003), or anything else that is actually useful everywhere else.
My EXACT fear staying where I am longer than I have to.
i followed a similiar path as you. Best Buy, Lockheed Martin HelpDesk, and then I get my first admin position
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@Dashrender said:
I don't think I agree with you on this Scott. DAS, from my experience IS just a shelf of drives with either one or two scsi/SAS cables to a SCSI/SAS controller that is inside the server. The controller isn't in the external drive box. Though I will say I haven't dealt with this level of tech in quite some time, so perhaps it's changed and the controller is always in the external box now, but what would you be plugging into? Something in the PCIe slot I would assume - and what would that card be if not a controller?
It can be. That is a DAS disk shelf, then (JBOD) and not what most people expect when they are buying enteprise storage.
Every time that people talk about DAS in a discussion like this, you can safely assume that they meant to imply that it had its own controller internal. That's why people talk about single or dual controller enclosures, no one ever talks about a no-controller enclosure.
Remember that RAID encapsulates disks and makes them appear as... disks. So the connector for a RAID array is SAS or SATA, just like it is for a single drive. It connects to an external SAS connector on your server (or desktop.) It attaches just like any other external hard drive. To the server, there is literally no way to tell, logically or physically, when it is talking to a single disk or when it is talking to a disk array.
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@Dashrender said:
Something in the PCIe slot I would assume - and what would that card be if not a controller?
It's called an HBA but it is just a SAS adapter. Or a RAID controller. RAID can attach to RAID. It is the same interface in every direction so you ca stack them indefinitely.
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@IRJ said:
I met up with him recently and I can't believe how lost he was about everything. He is the best tech at the helpdesk, but all he knows is all that Lockheed Propriety software. He hasn't taken the time on his own to practice networking, Windows Server (since 2003), or anything else that is actually useful everywhere else.
Fixed that for you.
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I didn't learn any of this stuff being in a business that used it. Needing to learn on the job will cripple an IT career. The job might teach somethings, but in general only specific things that the company needs. A real IT education has to be found elsewhere. Same is true for most professions. They expect you to be qualified through your own actions before doing a job, not taking a job without the skills and then they will train you for another job.
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OK Scott, that makes sense.. how do you mange the DAS shelf?
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@thanksaj said:
He's one of the best we have on this product for Tier II. I was just surprised at the blatant ignorance on the basic term. Basically, that's what I don't want to become working proprietary software support. You get good at one or two products, but start losing your general IT grasps.
Is he even really IT? He might be, but there are people who just do application support for one thing. IT isn't what they do. Yeah, he's in a semi-IT department, but it is really fringe for IT (pure application support to the outside is not normally considered IT or just marginally IT.) But you can come from other directions to get to a position like that and you can leave and go to non-IT things. It's tangential to IT, but he is easily not an IT pro, just a support person and this is what he supports.
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@Dashrender said:
OK Scott, that makes sense.. how do you mange the DAS shelf?
A JBOD disk shelf is literally a pile of disks, nothing more. You attach them to whatever you want... HBA, RAID controller, whatever. And you treat them the same as any directly attached disk local or otherwise. JBOD shelves, to the computer, are not a thing. They are absolutely identical to internal disks in every way.
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@thanksaj said:
Most of the software my company sells was not made by them. They bought the company that produced it, they rebranded it, and now they train people to support it. So it's almost all secondhand training.
Technically, that means that the software WAS made by them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
OK Scott, that makes sense.. how do you mange the DAS shelf?
A JBOD disk shelf is literally a pile of disks, nothing more. You attach them to whatever you want... HBA, RAID controller, whatever. And you treat them the same as any directly attached disk local or otherwise. JBOD shelves, to the computer, are not a thing. They are absolutely identical to internal disks in every way.
I understand - but in the DAS storage people are talking about - you'd have to setup the RAID inside the chassis before presenting it to the HBA, so how do you do that?
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@Dashrender said:
I understand - but in the DAS storage people are talking about - you'd have to setup the RAID inside the chassis before presenting it to the HBA, so how do you do that?
OH! Well that's proprietary. Depends 100% on the unit. Mostly you get a big web interface to work from. Remember you are dealing with a full, logical device here with all the benefits of that being a computer in there. Drobo handles it by providing a client that you have to install on Windows, not as ideal as a web interface but they lack the horsepower for a web server (no really.) Netgear, Synology, Buffalo, Dell, HP, EMC, HDS, NetApp... all web and/or command line options.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
He's one of the best we have on this product for Tier II. I was just surprised at the blatant ignorance on the basic term. Basically, that's what I don't want to become working proprietary software support. You get good at one or two products, but start losing your general IT grasps.
Is he even really IT? He might be, but there are people who just do application support for one thing. IT isn't what they do. Yeah, he's in a semi-IT department, but it is really fringe for IT (pure application support to the outside is not normally considered IT or just marginally IT.) But you can come from other directions to get to a position like that and you can leave and go to non-IT things. It's tangential to IT, but he is easily not an IT pro, just a support person and this is what he supports.
He said he used to work in the service provider scene.
