[ale] Terabyte of data

[Robert L. Harris]

  My systems are Dual-AMD-1.5Ghz.  They're main duty is to share out 4
550Gig Software RAID5 arrays.  Now, I'm doing RAID5 as I need alot of
disk space with some redundancy.  The filesystem speed is actually very
fast even with a single disk failure.  I went from 1 large 2TB array to
the 4 smaller arrays as we hit the disks very hard and the odds of
loosing 2 disks in the same array are much higher when there's only 1.
The systems have been around a while and the IDE disks are approaching
MTBF.  I had one system with 2 failed disks recently in 2 different
arrays.  While 2 of my 4 Software RAID arrays were running in degraded
moded sharing out NFS disks for read and write, the CPU's were still
pretty close to idle.  If these were Hardware raid they would have been
idle of course.

  My personal opinion would be to talk to Mr Kinney and see what he
would come up with.  When I talked to him he didn't just throw numbers,
he had some very valid information and actual specs to use.
Unfortunately I'm STILL fighting my company to look at a vendor outside
the guys in Canada.

Robert





Thus spake cfowler (cfowler at outpostsentinel.com):

> My main concern is processor speed.  I'm going to be providing this data
> as well as writing software to keep it Blowfish encrypted.  Every bit of
> it.  I do not know the specs of why/how the blowfish has to work but I
> know that it may need to be done.  I need good product because I need a
> "cookie cutter" solution.  My main concern is FS speed and hardware
> speed.  I'll be investigating which FS can give use good speed.  It may
> be that I would have to write a very small FS that provides the basics
> and does encryption on the fly.  I need at least 128bit encryption.  The
> more I think about it, it may be a custom fs is needed.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 07:28, Robert L. Harris wrote
> > 
> > 
> > I'm currently using a system that has 16 160G disks in a RAID5.  This 
> > gives me a bit more than you want of course.  I'm using a 3Ware IDE Raid 
> > card to provide connectivity but using Software RAID5.  Back when we
> > built this system the 3ware RAID5 implementation was a disaster for
> > performance, this may have changed however.
> > 
> > One note, with the 3ware card, the IDE drives are hot swapable if you
> > get a system with the right type of bays.
> > 
> > I can give you the name of our vendor though personally I'd recomend a
> > local vendor as ours is in canada and I'm having issues with him.   If
> > you go with someone local who has questions on design let me know, I'll
> > give exact specs on the system/chasis we're using.  The only thing I
> > recomend is a better system for locking down the drives as sometimes the
> > drives in our system will unseat themselves.....  Also, more fans, these
> > produce a good bit of heat.  Otherwise we have 8 of these providing ALOT
> > of disk space for our legato backup server and they're working very well
> > after a good bit of tuning.
> > 
> > Robert
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Thus spake cfowler (cfowler at outpostsentinel.com):
> > 
> > > 
> > > I'm looking at a situation where I need to create a raid 0 file system that
> > > equals 1 terabyte of storeage for trival data.  Has anyone done this with
> > > Linux?  I think the ext2 fs does have a limit that may keep it from going up
> > > to a terabyte in size.  I'll also have a limit on the file sizes too. 
> > > 
> > > Is there an ATA raid card that can do more than 4 drives.  It seems the
> > > biggest I can get is 200Mb drives.  I'll need at least 5 maybe 6 drives.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Ale mailing list
> > > Ale at ale.org
> > > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > 
> > :wq!
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Robert L. Harris                     | PGP Key ID: E344DA3B
> >                                          @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu 
> > DISCLAIMER:
> >       These are MY OPINIONS ALONE.  I speak for no-one else.
> > 
> > Diagnosis: witzelsucht
> -- 
> "The Law of Leaky Abstractions"
> There is a time where abstractions lead to the inablity to 
> fix problems that leak through the abstraction.
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

:wq!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert L. Harris                     | PGP Key ID: E344DA3B
                                         @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu 
DISCLAIMER:
      These are MY OPINIONS ALONE.  I speak for no-one else.

Diagnosis: witzelsucht

 PGP signature