[ale] Giant storage system suggestions

[Jeff Hubbs]

I hate NASses and recommend them only for amateurs.  That is, amateurs I 
don't like. :)

Replacing a vastly overpriced NAS (Netapp rebadged as IBM) with a 
Supermicro-based Linux/Samba machine full of SATA and SAS drives at a 
former employer saved tens of thousands of dollars and facilitated being 
able to do very fast ClamAV virus scans (at over 200MiB/s, IIRC) and 
searches and had the flexibility of...well, a Linux machine.  Compare 
this to having to pay IBM just to enable each protocol used (e.g., a few 
thou to switch on NFS).  On a contract job before that, a guy at LaCie 
eventually admitted to me that the NFS implementation on one of their 
products never worked right but they shipped regardless.  Crap like 
that.  But PHBs buy the things at the drop of a hat, thinking they're 
getting away with something.

On 7/14/12 5:01 PM, Erik Mathis wrote:
> Although this wasn't a solution with performance in mind, but this a
> really cheap 12T (8.2T usable) solution
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122062
> and
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236108
> iirc it was about $1300 9 months ago.
>
> This readynas supports iscsi, nfs, cifs, and LVM snapshots. Also 2X
> ethernet ports for bonding. If you have never used the readynas
> products, they are basically linux boxes (using MD+LVM) and they have
> a plugin system. They also have always been reliable for me. Anyway
> its a cheap way to scale
>
> -Erik-
>
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
>> I'm trying to design a storage system for some of my data in a way that
>> will be useful to duplicate the design for a project at work.
>>
>> Digging around online it seems that a common suggestion has been a good
>> motherboard, a SATA/SAS card, a SATA/SAS expander, and then a huge
>> chassis to support all of the SATA drives.
>>
>> It looks like one of the recommended SATA/SAS cards is an LSI 9200
>> series card connected to an Intel RES2SV240 expander.
>>
>> What I'm trying to achieve is continually expandable storage space.  As
>> more storage is required, I just keep slipping drives into the system.
>> If I max out a case, I just add a SATA/SAS card, use external SATA/SAS
>> cables (do those exist to go from SFF-8087 to SFF-8088?), another
>> expander and then stretch into a new case.
>>
>> It's obviously going to run linux or I wouldn't be asking here. :)  The
>> entire storage system will probably start somewhere around 10-16 TB and
>> grow from there.  The first question would be suggestions for an optimal
>> configuration of the disks.   For example, should the drives be grouped
>> into say RAID-5 arrays with four devices per array and then logically
>> combine them in software into a single storage volume?  If so, what file
>> system will support something that could potentially reach beyond 100 TB
>> (not that I'd reach 100 TB anytime soon but it can happen)?
>>
>> Thanks,
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