Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-13 Thread Juergen Gotteswinter
- Dell Equalogic - Very good experience, absolutly reliable
- EMC CX Series - Wont´t buy them again, many Problems with the iSCSI
- HP MSA - No Problems at all

Am 12.12.10 23:12, schrieb Ross Walker:
 On Dec 12, 2010, at 11:34 AM, Les Mikeselllesmikes...@gmail.com  wrote:

 On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 4:17 AM, Rudi Ahlersr...@softdux.com  wrote:

 In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
 anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
 Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
 OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
 scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
 for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
 still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.


 Have you tried nexentastor?  It's free up to 18TB - not sure about
 pricing after that but there's a 45 day trial of the full featured
 version.

 Nexentastor is a good product, buy it's just a software product and doesn't 
 build a tight redundant configuration. Plus there is the whole risk 
 associated around Oracle controlling Solaris/ZFS development and bringing it 
 in-house which may mean that companies that built their business off open 
 source Solaris/ZFS might not survive long term.

 -Ross

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-13 Thread RedShift

 In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
 anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
 Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
 OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
 scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
 for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
 still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.

I'd stay away from AoE for high availability, I've tried it at home but 
performance can fluctuate and the AoE driver present in CentOS 5 is way too 
old. I wasn't able to build a HA setup without corrupting data when failover 
occured.

For what I'm using AoE - to boot my mediacenter - exporting a single LVM LV, it 
works perfectly fine for me. For more serious uses, iSCSI is definitely the way 
to go.
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-13 Thread Prentice Bisbal


John R Pierce wrote:
 On 12/11/10 8:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.
 
 see, I'd consider ReadyNAS to be SOHO, just what you said you didn't want.
 
 
 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.
 
 the big boys in NAS are Network Appliance aka Netapp.  they will scale 
 as large as your budget allows.  The FAS6200 line scales to something 
 like 1400 drives and redundant HA controllers.

And they will charge as much as your budget allows, too.

-- 
Prentice
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-13 Thread John R Pierce
On 12/13/10 12:44 AM, RedShift wrote:
 I'd stay away from AoE for high availability, I've tried it at home but 
 performance can fluctuate and the AoE driver present in CentOS 5 is way too 
 old. I wasn't able to build a HA setup without corrupting data when failover 
 occured.


Any HA block storage structure will have data corruption issues on 
failover if there was dirty write cache on the failed controller, unless 
it implements some form of cache mirroring.   cache mirroring is rather 
expensive performance-wise and not doable with any off-the-shelf 
software I'm aware of.


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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread Rudi Ahlers
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia nka...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Rainer Duffner rai...@ultra-secure.de 
 wrote:

 The other question is if it actually works.
 Too many of the low-cost devices eat the data on the drives, when the
 motherboard or the controller fries...
 With luck, you can read the data on one of the drives...

 If the client only needs 12TB, there's shurely a NetApp that is
 cheaper but only scales to 10 or 20TB.
 If the client has maxed that out and needs to go beyond that, he needs
 to buy a bigger filer-head + shelves and migrate his data (AFAIK,
 that's possible, at a charge...).

 NetApps are wonderful. So is a Hercules transport. Amazing pieces of
 engineering, completely unsuitable for home use due to expense of
 underlying hardware and excessive sophistication of high availability
 components which, in a modest environment, is more easily done with
 rsnapshot and a few of the cheapest drives.

NetAPP's are far too overpriced for our needs. I need something more
affordable.



 12 TB, well, there you're getting into noticeable storage. What are
 your requirements? High availability? On-line snapshots? Encryption?
 Do you need that 12 TB all as one array, or can it be gracefully split
 into 3 or 4 smaller chunks to provide redundance and upgrade paths, or
 put different data on different filesystems for different
 requirements?

In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.

For a different setup, one of our clients needs to store archived
video footage of their CCTV system, which currently generates about
1TB's worth of data in one day. NetApp devices is simply off the scale
when it comes to afford-ability in this case. What-ever we decide to
go with needs to be cheap enough so that we can have 2x the setup for
backup purposes.





 You might want to try to get a quote from Oracle for a Unified Storage
 Appliance 7320 and compare it with one of NetApps entry-level offerings.

 With 100TB, DIY is out of the question ;-)

 IBM sells some nice one rack units as well. All of them play nicely
 with CentOS, but you need to think about the actual connecton. GigE
 and NFS, which works surprisingly well? Sophisticated permissions with
 Samba 3.6, NFSv4 and NTFS compatibility with a NetApp QTree? Or just a
 big honking array to store all the porn and Bittorrent movies to brag
 about?

 BTW: what does the client do with the disk-space? What's the access-
 pattern?

 Indeed. Details! Details matter!
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-- 
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Rudi Ahlers
SoftDux

Website: http://www.SoftDux.com
Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com
Office: 087 805 9573
Cell: 082 554 7532
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread David Sommerseth
On 12/12/10 08:56, John R Pierce wrote:

 IBM sells some nice one rack units as well.

 speaking of.anyone have any experience with the IBM DS3500 storage?

 I've been considering the DS3500 for my dev lab storage.   These come
 24x2.5 (or 12x3.5) SAS 2U boxes with redundant storage controllers
 that have 2x2 SAS host ports and either 2x4 gigE iscsi or 2x4gb FC
 ports.   you get to pay extra for more host partitions and stuff.   they
 are basically rebranded LSI/Engenio 2600 and come in both 12x3.5 or
 24x2.5 2U SAS chassis... there's also SAS expansion ports you can add
 several additional storage bays to.

 I have zero (0) experience with IBM branded storage.I do have a IBM
 Bladecenter and Power 520 AIX server in my lab, so I'm not all together
 unfamiliar with IBM.

I don't know about the DS3500, but I'm using a DS3200 with SAS HBA interface. 
  It the moment it's used by a Fedora 12 box (I'm freezing on this release and 
awaits for C6 to appear), and it works just flawlessly.  Nice, quite intuitive 
and informative admin interface which is accessible directly via TCP/IP to the 
storage unit (out-of-band) or using the SAS interface directly (in-band).

The only thing to pick on the admin interface is that it's Java and I had to 
tweak the start script a little bit to make it run as a non-root user via a 
VPN connection.  Another thing is that an instance of the admin interface must 
be running for automated e-mail alerts if something happens.

Except of that, I'm very happy with it!  The unit have 12 slots for disks and 
it is possible to connect more units together.  Its also one available slot 
for another controller, so that two servers may use it via separate physical 
channels.  It also have two power supplies as standard and it even complains 
badly if one of them is not connected.

The host adapter is the IBM 3Gb SAS HBA Controller v2, which uses the mptsas 
(Fusion-MPT SAS) driver, so Linux support is present.  I don't know, but I 
would even expect this driver to be recent enough in RHEL5/C5 as well.

I do not have any particular experience with other storage brands and I chose 
this one due to my very good experience with IBM servers and their Linux 
support.  And I would definitely go out and by another IBM storage again if I 
needed to.


kind regards,

David Sommerseth

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread William Warren
On 12/11/2010 11:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

 TheCus devices seems to be rather powerful as well, and you can stack
 upto 5 units together. But that's where the line stops.

 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.



 So, what do you use?
 How well does it work for you?
 And, how reliable / fast / scalable is it?

Two things:
QNAP
coraid

coraid is in the Linux Kernel(don't know about Cent 5 though) but you 
can also look into them directly as well..:)
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread Rudi Ahlers
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:07 PM, William Warren
hescomins...@emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com wrote:
 On 12/11/2010 11:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

 TheCus devices seems to be rather powerful as well, and you can stack
 upto 5 units together. But that's where the line stops.

 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.



 So, what do you use?
 How well does it work for you?
 And, how reliable / fast / scalable is it?

 Two things:
 QNAP
 coraid

 coraid is in the Linux Kernel(don't know about Cent 5 though) but you
 can also look into them directly as well..:)
 ___


It may just be due to the limited suppliers we have with these devices
in South Africa, but I found the TheCus devices to perform better than
the QNAP's that I could get hold off. I'm still looking for a Coraid
supplier


-- 
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
SoftDux

Website: http://www.SoftDux.com
Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com
Office: 087 805 9573
Cell: 082 554 7532
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread Ross Walker
On Dec 12, 2010, at 5:17 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:

 On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia nka...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Rainer Duffner rai...@ultra-secure.de 
 wrote:
 
 The other question is if it actually works.
 Too many of the low-cost devices eat the data on the drives, when the
 motherboard or the controller fries...
 With luck, you can read the data on one of the drives...
 
 If the client only needs 12TB, there's shurely a NetApp that is
 cheaper but only scales to 10 or 20TB.
 If the client has maxed that out and needs to go beyond that, he needs
 to buy a bigger filer-head + shelves and migrate his data (AFAIK,
 that's possible, at a charge...).
 
 NetApps are wonderful. So is a Hercules transport. Amazing pieces of
 engineering, completely unsuitable for home use due to expense of
 underlying hardware and excessive sophistication of high availability
 components which, in a modest environment, is more easily done with
 rsnapshot and a few of the cheapest drives.
 
 NetAPP's are far too overpriced for our needs. I need something more
 affordable.
 
 
 
 12 TB, well, there you're getting into noticeable storage. What are
 your requirements? High availability? On-line snapshots? Encryption?
 Do you need that 12 TB all as one array, or can it be gracefully split
 into 3 or 4 smaller chunks to provide redundance and upgrade paths, or
 put different data on different filesystems for different
 requirements?
 
 In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
 anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
 Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
 OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
 scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
 for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
 still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.
 
 For a different setup, one of our clients needs to store archived
 video footage of their CCTV system, which currently generates about
 1TB's worth of data in one day. NetApp devices is simply off the scale
 when it comes to afford-ability in this case. What-ever we decide to
 go with needs to be cheap enough so that we can have 2x the setup for
 backup purposes.

Take a look at Equallogic.

Each enclosure is an independent unit that can work in cooperation with other 
Equallogic enclosures to form a storage group, from which volumes are created 
that are striped across group members.

Each enclosure comes with redundant controllers and for 10Gbe, dual interfaces, 
and for 1Gbe, quad interfaces, 4GB of cache memory.

Snapshots, replication, host integration tools are all included in he basic 
license (all features are available out-of-the-box at no additional charge).

Need some more performance? Buy another unit, add it to the storage group and 
your existing volumes will start striping across it.

SATA/SAS/SSD enclosure types available in 16 drive or 32 drive units.

The whole storage group is managed from a single IP address from any host that 
supports HTTP and Java.

-Ross

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread Les Mikesell
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 4:17 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:

 In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
 anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
 Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
 OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
 scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
 for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
 still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.


Have you tried nexentastor?  It's free up to 18TB - not sure about
pricing after that but there's a 45 day trial of the full featured
version.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-12 Thread Ross Walker
On Dec 12, 2010, at 11:34 AM, Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 4:17 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:
 
 In one instance we need to host virtual machines, so we don't need
 anything fancy. I'm happy with running iSCSI / NFS and even AOE.
 Currently we have a few 2U SuperMicro servers with 24bays, running
 OpenFiler. But, OpenFiler is outdated and limited when it comes to
 scalability. Ideally, I would like to have a single host type setup,
 for when we move a client to a larger / new / different array, he
 still connects to the same host - i.e. for high availability.
 
 
 Have you tried nexentastor?  It's free up to 18TB - not sure about
 pricing after that but there's a 45 day trial of the full featured
 version.

Nexentastor is a good product, buy it's just a software product and doesn't 
build a tight redundant configuration. Plus there is the whole risk associated 
around Oracle controlling Solaris/ZFS development and bringing it in-house 
which may mean that companies that built their business off open source 
Solaris/ZFS might not survive long term.

-Ross

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread John R Pierce
On 12/11/10 8:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

see, I'd consider ReadyNAS to be SOHO, just what you said you didn't want.


 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.

the big boys in NAS are Network Appliance aka Netapp.  they will scale 
as large as your budget allows.  The FAS6200 line scales to something 
like 1400 drives and redundant HA controllers.




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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rudi Ahlers
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 6:31 PM, John R Pierce pie...@hogranch.com wrote:
 On 12/11/10 8:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

 see, I'd consider ReadyNAS to be SOHO, just what you said you didn't want.


 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.

 the big boys in NAS are Network Appliance aka Netapp.  they will scale
 as large as your budget allows.  The FAS6200 line scales to something
 like 1400 drives and redundant HA controllers.




 ___


Yes, I know. But the problem I have with NetApp is that it's not build
for a smaller market. i.e. a client looking to start small and scale
as he needs, and can afford to.

The NetGear's allow exactly just that. One can start small and grow as
needed. There's no need to over budget or over spend. Often a client
only needs about 5 to 12 TB storage, but with high availability. I
suppose the redundant PSU's do help a bit with that, and both TheCus
and ReadyNAS can be setup in high availability with 2 devices.




-- 
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
SoftDux

Website: http://www.SoftDux.com
Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com
Office: 087 805 9573
Cell: 082 554 7532
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rainer Duffner

Am 11.12.2010 um 17:38 schrieb Rudi Ahlers:


 Yes, I know. But the problem I have with NetApp is that it's not build
 for a smaller market. i.e. a client looking to start small and scale
 as he needs, and can afford to.

 The NetGear's allow exactly just that. One can start small and grow as
 needed. There's no need to over budget or over spend. Often a client
 only needs about 5 to 12 TB storage, but with high availability. I
 suppose the redundant PSU's do help a bit with that, and both TheCus
 and ReadyNAS can be setup in high availability with 2 devices.




The other question is if it actually works.
Too many of the low-cost devices eat the data on the drives, when the  
motherboard or the controller fries...
With luck, you can read the data on one of the drives...

If the client only needs 12TB, there's shurely a NetApp that is  
cheaper but only scales to 10 or 20TB.
If the client has maxed that out and needs to go beyond that, he needs  
to buy a bigger filer-head + shelves and migrate his data (AFAIK,  
that's possible, at a charge...).

It would be a waste of money to have a filer-head that can scale to  
100TB sit with only 12TB.
For 100TB, you need bigger filer-hardware.
Most people who say we need to scale to 100TB never reach it - it's  
wishful thinking that their business will continue to grow like in the  
1st year.

You might want to try to get a quote from Oracle for a Unified Storage  
Appliance 7320 and compare it with one of NetApps entry-level offerings.

With 100TB, DIY is out of the question ;-)

BTW: what does the client do with the disk-space? What's the access- 
pattern?



Rainer
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rafa Grimán
Hi :)

On Saturday 11 December 2010 17:38 Rudi Ahlers wrote
 On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 6:31 PM, John R Pierce pie...@hogranch.com wrote:
  On 12/11/10 8:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
  If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
  referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
  home theater system.
  
  We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
  I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
  ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
  with them is the lack of decent scalability.
  
  see, I'd consider ReadyNAS to be SOHO, just what you said you didn't
  want.
  
  I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
  device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
  most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.
  
  Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
  known brands, I don't know.
  
  the big boys in NAS are Network Appliance aka Netapp. �they will scale
  as large as your budget allows. �The FAS6200 line scales to something
  like 1400 drives and redundant HA controllers.
  
  
  
  
  ___
 
 Yes, I know. But the problem I have with NetApp is that it's not build
 for a smaller market. i.e. a client looking to start small and scale
 as he needs, and can afford to.


What about a DIY NAS with an off the shelf server and storage array?


 The NetGear's allow exactly just that. One can start small and grow as
 needed. There's no need to over budget or over spend. Often a client
 only needs about 5 to 12 TB storage, but with high availability. I
 suppose the redundant PSU's do help a bit with that, and both TheCus
 and ReadyNAS can be setup in high availability with 2 devices.


If you get your hands on COTS servers and storage arrays you can configure a 
NAS server with very good performance. If you can use GFS/GPFS/CXFS and 
configure a multi head NAS server you can sclae quite a lot. IBM sells this as 
SONAS, SGI also sells something similar with CXFS and you can do it yourself 
if you want it cheaper ;)

Scaling storage is quite simple if you use LVM + XFS:
1.- you add a new array or enclosure with its drives
2.- creat your RAID (5, 6, whatever)
3.- add the new RAID to your LVM
4.- grow XFS

You might need a couple of FC switches, depending on the number of of storage 
arrays, servers, and if you want HA.

I don't like appliances. Yeah, they're quite easy/nice to use, but it's a 
non stop paying for everything and quite a lock-in solution. Just MHO, mind 
you.

HTH

   Rafa

-- 
We cannot treat computers as Humans. Computers need love.

Happily using KDE 4.5.1 :)
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread John R Pierce
On 12/11/10 8:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.

oh, another.  NexSAN ... this is more SAN block storage than NAS file 
storage, but you can put a  NFS server between your NAS clients and it 
for NAS functionality.

the SATAbeast is like 48 SATA drives, for up to 84TB raw (typically 
you'd want to reserve some hotspares and some level of raid striping, 
say, 7 x 6-way raid5)

these don't have the same level of total redundancy as a NetApp Filer 
has, but they are way cheaper.










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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread John R Pierce
On 12/11/10 9:29 AM, Rafa Grimán wrote:

 What about a DIY NAS with an off the shelf server and storage array?

and how do you avoid single-point-of-failure?if that COTS goes down, 
your storage is offline, and you've lost any writes in progress.

enterprise storage has fully redundant *everything*, a dual filer HA 
NetApp box will not even blink if any subsystem fails.cached write 
data is mirrored in both controllers so if one controller croaks, the 
other can flush the buffers for it, and client storage connections 
continue without a hiccup.yes, you pay for this.





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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Ryan Wagoner
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

I setup a Netgear ReadyNAS for a small office client and found the
performance to be lacking. I could only get 10-15MB/s on a gigabit
network.

 So, what do you use?
 How well does it work for you?
 And, how reliable / fast / scalable is it?

For my own NAS I use CentOS and mdadm across a few TB drives.
Performance gives me 30-40MB/s from Windows clients using Samba. Of
course this route means you need to roll your own HA solution.

If you want off the shelf performance, scalability, and reliability
expect to pay $15k plus. For the office I am using a Dell MD3200i
iSCSI SAN with redundant controllers and switches. I have a few ESXi
boxes connected. One guest is a Windows box with a lun mapped for file
sharing. Performance is decent, reliability is there, and it is easy
to expand by adding additional bricks.

Ryan
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Les Mikesell
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

 TheCus devices seems to be rather powerful as well, and you can stack
 upto 5 units together. But that's where the line stops.

 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.



 So, what do you use?
 How well does it work for you?
 And, how reliable / fast / scalable is it?


NetApp is probably the first place to look.  I don't  have personal
experience with it, but others in my company like the IBM XIV.  It
installs as a whole rack (with some extra requirements for weight and
cooling) but I think they have a 'pay for what you use' plan and can
fill the drives in as needed.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rafa Grimán
On Saturday 11 December 2010 18:37 John R Pierce wrote
 On 12/11/10 9:29 AM, Rafa Grimán wrote:
  What about a DIY NAS with an off the shelf server and storage array?
 
 and how do you avoid single-point-of-failure?if that COTS goes down,
 your storage is offline, and you've lost any writes in progress.
 
 enterprise storage has fully redundant *everything*, a dual filer HA
 NetApp box will not even blink if any subsystem fails.cached write
 data is mirrored in both controllers so if one controller croaks, the
 other can flush the buffers for it, and client storage connections
 continue without a hiccup.yes, you pay for this.


As I said a bit further down in my previous e-mail: you can use GPFS, CXFS, 
GFS as its filesystem and have redundant hardware.

If you want to get a better idea, check out SONAS from IBM. It's basically 
GPFS + Samba and redundant HW. You get HA, high performance, modularity and 
flexibility. You can also check out:

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/006apr05/features/gfs/

If you don't want to shell out what IBM is going to charge you, you can DIY 
(if you have the knowledge) or you can hire some Linux consultant that has a 
good Linux knowledge. 

HTH

   Rafa

-- 
We cannot treat computers as Humans. Computers need love.

Happily using KDE 4.5.1 :)
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Drew
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

We're using two different products that qualify under that heading.

For NAS devices, which are our primary backup medium, we use the QNAP
TS-809U-RP. Not stupidly fast but for backup's they're decent. Some
might argue they're SOHO but for our use, they do what we need.

Now for the primary SAN at head office we use the D'Link xStack
DSN-5110-10. 12 disks in 2U. We ponied up for the redundant controller
model which gives us true HA. On our model we can scale up by an extra
three drive chassis if we wish, giving us up to 48TB (based on 1TB SAS
disks). The 5210  5410 will scale up to an extra six chassis giving
the user up to 84TB, more if they spring for 2TB SAS disks.


-- 
Drew

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
--Marie Curie
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Adam Tauno Williams
On Sat, 2010-12-11 at 18:15 +0200, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.

EMC AX4 SAN (iSCSI)

 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.

EMC - Scalability is never an issue.

 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.

Go EMC.  Support is solid and the units are well designed.

 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.


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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Ross Walker
On Dec 11, 2010, at 11:15 AM, Rudi Ahlers r...@softdux.com wrote:

 If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
 referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
 home theater system.
 
 We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
 I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
 ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
 with them is the lack of decent scalability.
 
 TheCus devices seems to be rather powerful as well, and you can stack
 upto 5 units together. But that's where the line stops.
 
 I'm now looking for something that could scale beyond 100TB on one
 device (not necessarily one unit though) and find it frustrating that
 most NAS's come in 1U or 2U at most.
 
 Maybe I'm just not shopping around enough, or maybe I prefer to well
 known brands, I don't know.
 
 
 
 So, what do you use?
 How well does it work for you?
 And, how reliable / fast / scalable is it?

I use Equallogic and it performs very well and it scales quite good as well.

It's quite a bit more then Netgear but it's enterprise level

Though it's iSCSI only, so if your looking for CIFS/NFS included then it's not 
for you. I provide file services through virtualization and even the extra 
licensing costs, it's way cheaper then EMC/NetApp NAS head licensing (and 
guaranteed compatible too).

-Ross

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rainer Duffner


Go EMC.  Support is solid and the units are well designed.





But-But - they run Windows on the low-end stuff, don't they?
;-)))


Rainer

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Ross Walker
On Dec 11, 2010, at 5:11 PM, Rainer Duffner rai...@ultra-secure.de wrote:

 
 Go EMC.  Support is solid and the units are well designed.
 
 
 
 
 But-But - they run Windows on the low-end stuff, don't they?
 ;-)))

I think they run embedded windows on some of their high-end stuff as well.

If done properly the embedded OS in the device is of little consequence, you'll 
only ever interface with it through a web interface or standalone client and 
updates are done through firmware upgrades.

As long as it performs and scales as advertised I don't care if it runs AmigaOS 
under the hood.

-Ross

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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Jerry Franz
On 12/11/2010 09:24 AM, Rainer Duffner wrote:

 With 100TB, DIY is out of the question ;-)

I wouldn't say that. It would be...challenging...but not out of the 
question.

But Aberdeen (note - I have no financial interest. They are simply 
someone I've seen marketing Linux based SAN/NAS machines before) has 
some not too insane pricing for a ready-built 132TB machine.

http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/8UDS-Nehalem-Linux-NAS.htm

-- 
Benjamin Franz
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Rafa Grimán
On Saturday 11 December 2010 23:50 Jerry Franz wrote
 On 12/11/2010 09:24 AM, Rainer Duffner wrote:
  With 100TB, DIY is out of the question ;-)
 
 I wouldn't say that. It would be...challenging...but not out of the
 question.


I don't see why it's out of the question. Why should it be? Nowadays it's not 
that much volume: 50 x 2 TB drives (+ parity drives depending on the type of 
RAID you're going to use + some spares).

A mid size storage array scales 2 - 3 times that much: LSI OEMs (SGI, IBM, 
SUN/Oracle), Bull's Optima 1500/2000, DDN's S2A 6620, ... And that's a single 
array with dual controller (active/active) so you've got HA in the array. 

If you're going to set up an active/pasive pair of NAS heads, you don't even 
need the FC switches (those storage arrays have 4 - 12 FC ports so you can 
plug the servers right into the storage array controllers). You'd just need 2 
servers that could scale in memory and I/O ... which is very common: mid level 
servers have 2 sockets (8 - 24 cores) and scale to around 96 GB and have 6 x 
PCIe slots.

If you _DO_ need active/active NAS heads, then you can go with GPFS/GFS/CXFS 
filesystems and you'd need a couple of FC switches.

[...]

   Rafa

-- 
We cannot treat computers as Humans. Computers need love.

Happily using KDE 4.5.1 :)
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread Nico Kadel-Garcia
On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Rainer Duffner rai...@ultra-secure.de wrote:

 The other question is if it actually works.
 Too many of the low-cost devices eat the data on the drives, when the
 motherboard or the controller fries...
 With luck, you can read the data on one of the drives...

 If the client only needs 12TB, there's shurely a NetApp that is
 cheaper but only scales to 10 or 20TB.
 If the client has maxed that out and needs to go beyond that, he needs
 to buy a bigger filer-head + shelves and migrate his data (AFAIK,
 that's possible, at a charge...).

NetApps are wonderful. So is a Hercules transport. Amazing pieces of
engineering, completely unsuitable for home use due to expense of
underlying hardware and excessive sophistication of high availability
components which, in a modest environment, is more easily done with
rsnapshot and a few of the cheapest drives.

12 TB, well, there you're getting into noticeable storage. What are
your requirements? High availability? On-line snapshots? Encryption?
Do you need that 12 TB all as one array, or can it be gracefully split
into 3 or 4 smaller chunks to provide redundance and upgrade paths, or
put different data on different filesystems for different
requirements?

 You might want to try to get a quote from Oracle for a Unified Storage
 Appliance 7320 and compare it with one of NetApps entry-level offerings.

 With 100TB, DIY is out of the question ;-)

IBM sells some nice one rack units as well. All of them play nicely
with CentOS, but you need to think about the actual connecton. GigE
and NFS, which works surprisingly well? Sophisticated permissions with
Samba 3.6, NFSv4 and NTFS compatibility with a NetApp QTree? Or just a
big honking array to store all the porn and Bittorrent movies to brag
about?

 BTW: what does the client do with the disk-space? What's the access-
 pattern?

Indeed. Details! Details matter!
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Re: [CentOS] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

2010-12-11 Thread John R Pierce

 IBM sells some nice one rack units as well.

speaking of.anyone have any experience with the IBM DS3500 storage?

I've been considering the DS3500 for my dev lab storage.   These come 
24x2.5 (or 12x3.5) SAS 2U boxes with redundant storage controllers 
that have 2x2 SAS host ports and either 2x4 gigE iscsi or 2x4gb FC 
ports.   you get to pay extra for more host partitions and stuff.   they 
are basically rebranded LSI/Engenio 2600 and come in both 12x3.5 or 
24x2.5 2U SAS chassis... there's also SAS expansion ports you can add 
several additional storage bays to.

I have zero (0) experience with IBM branded storage.I do have a IBM  
Bladecenter and Power 520 AIX server in my lab, so I'm not all together 
unfamiliar with IBM.


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