Rainer Toebbicke wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Lyle Seaman wrote:
> > replicated elsewhere. At the present time, I don't know of anyone who
> > stores more than 60 GB of unreplicated read-write data on a single
> > fileserver. (Here's where everyone chimes in and tells me otherwise :-)
> >
>
> You knew it was going to happen: we do! Not 500, though.
Agh! Serves me right. How much *unreplicated* data do you keep on a
single server?
> 'attach' time *is* a nuisance
We are continuing to work on this problem, though I can't say when a
solution will be delivered. Meanwhile, consider sorting your volumes so
that the most frequently-used volumes are on "lower-lettered" partitions
than the others. Replicated volumes should be on the "highest-lettered"
partitions. Letter the partitions as needed to balance load across
spindles or SCSI busses. Pepper and salt to taste.
Sorry, I don't have any good suggestions for how to actually _do_ this
}. Keep in mind that you don't have to follow this recommendation 100%
of the time to realize the benefits.
> Having said this: the original question was about a 500 GB fileserver. As
> far as I understand restart time is governed by number of volumes to
> attach - one could cut down on those by making each one 2 GB and bigger.
> We have seen occasions on which somthing like that does not sound
> ridiculous.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to backup, move, or replicate those
volumes > 2GB.
Restart time is governed both by number of volumes and number of
inodes. Volumes with lots of symlinks, for instance, will take longer
to attach than their size would indicate.
Fortunately, the original question was about a 500 GB _cell_, with at
least 4 servers. That wouldn't be breaking new ground, though I think
I'd prefer another server or two.
