[clue-tech] NAS solution

[Jeff Falgout]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Patrick H. <clue at feystorm.net> wrote:
> Does anyone know of any fast but not-so-expensive NAS solutions? My company
> currently uses several EMC clariions for our storage, but theyre getting
> extremely expensive.
> I've looked at solutions such as OpenFiler, NexentaStor, and FreeNAS, none
> of which are mature enough for our use. We need something that is fast,
> stable, and supports over-tcp replication. All in all, we'll be needing
> about 20TB or storage, but it can be split up into multiple devices/whatever
> as it doesnt need to be a single 20TB filesystem.
>
> Putting a solution together from scratch on linux is possible, but it'd be
> nice to use something put together and proven reliable, as downtime is
> EXTREMELY bad.
>

Patrick,

Since you're open to building one yourself you may want to look at
http://linux-ha.org/ServeRAID - It's IBM specific hardware, but a
reasonable choice. I'm getting ready to move down that road to handle
19 TB, just waiting for the hardware to arrive. Make sure you look at
the requirement for 2 ESM's (Environmental Service Module) on each
array you attach. Also, that page is a bit dated so I'd recommend
talking to a sales rep before you make the purchase. I ended up
ordering the MegaRAID controllers with EXP3000 arrays.

I've used DRBD in the past to handle a 2TB file system, but I wasn't
100% satisified (That was about 2 years ago, things may have gotten
better). I seemed to get a lot of split brained behavour when I'd take
one node down for maintenance. I didn't drill down to the problem
since it was just a stop gap until a fancy smancy clariion was
purchased and installed.

Jeff