It is possible to have “shared” storage for an application such as NBU, via a feature called FSS (flexible storage sharing or flexible shared storage...we changed the name at some point) which uses the idea of “shared nothing” for storage. This is accomplished with our Cluster Filesystem (CFS).
If order to get the IO performance required for NBU master services, you need a very fast network with very low latency. 10Gb at a minimum. You should have at least one, preferably two NICs dedicated to the cluster, along with at least one public NIC for backup traffic. These are minimums.
One should consider SSD SATA drives for NBU storage or other faster, low latency storage.
These are just base recommendations. See the admin guides for details.
For some folks, the above config can be less expansive than consuming array storage.
For others, it might be less expensive to purchase HBAs and zone array storage.
Cheers
_______________________________
My customers spend the weekends at home with family, not in the datacenter.
