MDS/SAN FC switch - Which team is responsible

[Clem58]

Hello,

We have a debate between our teams, we need to know which team is the more apprioriate for managing MDS/SAN FC switch configuration, zoning etc..

Network team ?
Server team ? (that is also managing storage).

Currently we have only few people (2) in Network team who are managing SAN FC switches, and I think it's a risky point, and this activity should be moved to Server team level and not Network team anymore, as we should add more SAN FC switches in different locations soon.

What are your thoughts ?

[marce1000]

   - I think the label 'team' is not important here ; storage networking has is it's own specialized knowledge area's and projects should then be handled by qualified people on these topics.

  M.

[Jason Mooney]

When Storge Area Networks were first introduce, the Server teams (AIX/Solaris/HPE/Windows) were responsible for purchasing their own storage.  Because of the close relationship with the storage vendor it was only natural for the server teams to take on the responsibility of allocating storage, zoning and configuration fabric switches.  

For many larger organizations as they grew, a new SAN Team was formed.  It didn't matter if the fabric switches were branded as Brocade or Cisco, it was always the SAN/Storage team that was responsible.

Not knowing what your environment is like, I will say it's easier for the Server team to diagnose why they can't see a newly provisioned LUN, versus a network engineer which is responsible for many different protocols, firewalls, and core infrastructure.

As @marce1000 mentioned, storage administration is a completely different skillset all by itself.

[Clem58]

Thanks for your input Jason and Marce, I really appreciate.