John: Maybe a SAN via ATA over ethernet and logical volumes? I've never used this, but it might help you address your problem? Again, I don't know if this will actually solve your problem or not, but it's an idea. http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS3189760067.html http://sourceforge.net/projects/aoetools/
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Horst Birthelmer Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 3:32 AM To: John Falk Cc: openafs AFS Subject: Re: [OpenAFS] Large Data Storage On Mar 28, 2006, at 9:18 PM, John Falk wrote: > I'm looking for a solution that would provide large amounts of data > storage and would be able to grow exponentially. I am a network > administrator for a school, like most schools right now budgets are > tight and our data storage needs are growing. I am looking to make a > giant raid5 out of retired machines. I was looking at the open-afs > project to create a network data storage cloud. As machines are > retired they would be added to the data storage cloud and all data > would be split across several machines like raid5. Is this or can > this easily be implemented using open-afs? Short answer to a 'long' question ;-) "no". AFS is a 'file system'. This means it _uses_ disks and it doesn't provide some. You can build your 'data cloud' by an AFS cell, but that's one layer above that (what I think you had in mind). AFS can provide a complete distributed filesystem, where clients and users aren't aware of the whole organization of data and servers behind. It comes with a complete set of management tools for the file system, authentication (if you want some, but that's a little too old for some people) authorization and some backup functionality and some nice supplemental file system goodies. It's not a networked RAID substitute nor a high availability data cluster, etc. (I seem to run out of examples of misinterpretations of a 'distributed filesystem' :-) ) I didn't want to scare you off, and I sincerely hope I haven't, I just tried to clarify things. Horst P.S.: There was another project providing networked software disc RAIDs, but I don't remember the name. _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
