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Wow, thanks for all the advice, I will start following up all the myriad options put forth!<BR>
<BR>
On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 11:43 +0100, Phillip Bennett wrote:
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Just a thought, but have you looked at ATA over Ethernet (AoE)?</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Have a look at <A HREF="http://www.coraid.com">www.coraid.com</A>, specifically the SR1521. With 2 GigE ports </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">hooked up, speed is pretty good. Also, they use SATA-II drives, so they're </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">fairly cheap for disks.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">The drivers are included in most major Linux distros and they are said to be </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">very good at scaling; simply add more boxes.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>From what I've read in this thread, it'd suit your needs and hopefully not </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">break the budget. I've priced one previously for £4439 @ 4.5TB (using 8 </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">disks). With the exchange rate what it is now, you should be well under the </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">$25k budget!</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I'm not sure if there is an Oz distributer or if you'd have to go direct, so </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">it might not be the best situation. As I say though, it's just a thought.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Phil.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">----- Original Message ----- </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">From: "Paul Antoine" <<A HREF="mailto:pma-la@milleng.com.au">pma-la@milleng.com.au</A>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">To: <<A HREF="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</A>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 6:57 AM</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Subject: Re: [plug] SAN Advice</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>I agree re ReiserFS in particular, and early versions of XFS and JFS. I </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>must admit I've not kept up with ext3 developments that have obviously made </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>it more competitive than when I was last involved in benchmarking it. At </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>the time we were building a mail server to handle 100's of thousands of </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>users and the lack of hashed directories was a serious performance problem.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Terabyte filesystems are now trivially easy to build even without LVM!</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Yay for 1TB drives... we've never had the ability to lose so much data so </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> quickly :-)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> P.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Cameron Patrick wrote:</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> Paul Antoine wrote:</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>>> I'd run JFS as filesystem under Linux which allows for online filesystem </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>>> growth (the RAID card will do the online RAID volume expansion.)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> Just a comment: my past experiences with XFS and Reiserfs have led me to</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> be leery of anything that's not ext3 under Linux. These days ext3 also</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> does online expansion and hashed directories (so directories with large</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> numbers of files don't suck like they used to). It's the most popular</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> filesystem so gets the most testing and is least likely to lead to weird</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> behaviour - though that's not to say that it's not possible, as a few</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> people on this list have discovered in the past.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> Another thing to look at is LVM - which I presume anyone looking at</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> terabytes of storage will already be familiar with!</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> Cameron (who has never been involved with large-scale SAN/NAS systems</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> but has set up and maintained a couple of smaller file servers.)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> _______________________________________________</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> PLUG discussion list: <A HREF="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> <A HREF="http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug">http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">>> Committee e-mail: <A HREF="mailto:committee@plug.linux.org.au">committee@plug.linux.org.au</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> _______________________________________________</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> PLUG discussion list: <A HREF="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> <A HREF="http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug">http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Committee e-mail: <A HREF="mailto:committee@plug.linux.org.au">committee@plug.linux.org.au</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">_______________________________________________</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">PLUG discussion list: <A HREF="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000"><A HREF="http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug">http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug</A></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Committee e-mail: <A HREF="mailto:committee@plug.linux.org.au">committee@plug.linux.org.au</A></FONT>
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