Hi gurus, I am looking for an infrastructure advice as I upgrade the network. I will attempt to explain my environment and seek "advice". I will try to be concise
Current Environment: ============ - A single server with 30 workstations. All running rhel for CAD simulations - The server is NFS/NIS/iptables/DNS/DHCP/samba/http/vmware ... and others ;) - The server is a supermicro board server with a 3ware 9550 SX SATA controller attached to 6 1TB disks (3 production, and 3 for backup on software raid to avoid being locked into the 3ware crapware raid) The Pain: ======= - Running backups with rsnapshot brings the server to its knees (as caching is disabled for data integrity, I had a very bad experience and disabled the cache) - I need more storage (I need like 3 ~ 4TB now) - Data and it's backup are on one machine - We need a new server for simulations anyway The Future (options): ======== 1- Turn old server into backup data store only, Get an iSCSI SAN to store primary data, get the simulations only server 2- Or, Turn old server into backup data store only, Get a NAS box to store primary data, get the simulations only server 3- Or, Turn old server into backup data store only, Get a new power edge 2900 server with 4TB installed storage. The new server will run NFS server, and will double with a Xen guest to run simulations on. I would CPU limit the xen guest to avoid CPU abuse. Since simulations are CPU intensive only, and NFS is IO intensive only, I see them as orthogonal, and are ok to run on one server seeking cheapest viable solution. Basically, I am pro option 3, very flexible, everything custom and on Linux. It would solve our pains, I hope the PERC controller with 1TB SAS disks will be fast enough for rsnapshot (~20GB) data, if so, it should solve our issues. However, the cool buzzwords on "storage consolidation and virtualization" mentions that it's best to centralize data off servers. I am seeking some advice on this setup. I know there is no single true solution though. I am afraid to get locked into a storage "box" that I can't really control, and since I won't be running any clusters or such, I don't quite get any direct benefits of storage consolidation in such a small environment. NFS shares are enough :) Appreciating your thoughts, btw, cost is very important :) Regards _______________________________________________ rhelv5-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-list
