Router on a stick.. some info

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Jay_2

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I have a small remote office they need 1 cisco switch for 48 ports, PoE, 10Gb uplinks and they will need a few VLANs.

There is no way I can budget for a switch that can do all the above and is Layer3 so I will need to do the good old router on a stick setup. The issue I have is performace, I am looking at an iSCSI SAN setup, the servers will connect directly to the SAN switches so their performance will be fine but the desktops will be connected to the LAN and so there is going to be an issue if they need access to an iSCSI LUN or even a basic NAS share (we are now looking at NetApp SANs)

The 1941 has gigabit ports but I expect that its true speed will be way blow that if I am also using sub interfaces for the different VLANs. What router do you think would be best for this purpose?
 
Why would desktops on the LAN be connecting to iSCSI LUN's on the SAN.....?
 
We have 2 users who have requested their own LUN .... I know its a bit mental and its a bitlate in the day to make lots of changes really as the budget is signed off.

How would you do it?
 
Why do you have to go Cisco. You could afford a layer 3 switch with the same requirements if you didn't.
 
I know, its the company policy.

Actually can you setup a LUN, connect the file server to it via iSCSI then share the folders from the file servers iSCSI drive over the network?
 
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You aren't going to get anywhere near a gig of routed throughput using a router unless you want to spend big money (i.e. 7200 series cisco with NPE G2) or better. Best bet is to go with a layer 3 capable switch such as 3560X which has 2 10gig uplinks (or 4 1gig) and 48 copper 1 gig ports.
 
yes, the 3560X is probably about £5,000 or $7822

Can i get away with sharing a iSCSI LUN via a file server?
 
Jay_oasis said:
yes, the 3560X is probably about £5,000 or $7822

Can i get away with sharing a iSCSI LUN via a file server?
Click to expand...

Yes, you just mount the lun in the server and share it out like any normal file share.


Also, you can get refurb'd cisco gear like the switch you're looking at for well under 3k
 
Jay_oasis said:
Can i get away with sharing a iSCSI LUN via a file server?
Click to expand...

Why can't you? iSCSI just serves up storage like a local physical HDD to the server. Does the user need true local and exclusive access to the LUN? That would be the only case that you'd need to extend the ISCSI cloud to the user desktop.
 
Thats what I have done before, not sure why they requested what they have. I will find out if a basic file share will be enough, if so then thats what they get and I dont have to worry about the L3 bottle neck as the VLANs will only be for phones and guest wifi.
 
Jay_oasis said:
Actually can you setup a LUN, connect the file server to it via iSCSI then share the folders from the file servers iSCSI drive over the network?
Click to expand...

Yes you can.
Mount the LUN on your file server. Share the folder the same way you would as if it were a local drive.
 
Jay_oasis said:
Thats what I have done before, not sure why they requested what they have. I will find out if a basic file share will be enough, if so then thats what they get and I dont have to worry about the L3 bottle neck as the VLANs will only be for phones and guest wifi.
Click to expand...

I wouldnt ask, the user is never going to know the difference. On the off chance that they do you can use the windows iscsi initiator.
 
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