Hello,
I'm the administrator of a file server from a student residential
accommodation (from Munich, so pardon my English).
The machine is an ordinary PC (currently one HD for system, one for
data, both paralell ATA). Due to the intendend use storage space is a
primary issue while data safety is not too important neither is speed.
Since money is also always low we need to be flexible with how we use
the harddisks. For example it's unlikely to be possible to buy two or
more identical harddisk to form a RAID 0.
My idea:
- Create an JBOD/NRAID of a all harddisks (except the system disk)
- The JBOD should be flexible when it comes to removing or adding
another disk. For example if I want to remove a harddisk I a) unmount
the JBOD b) say some kind of tool to free the harddisk to remove as
completely as possible c) remove the disk software and hardware wise.
- If we manage to get our hands on another harddisk it is added to the
volume. It there are already more than three disk present it replaces
the smallest one.
- Hot swapping is not important. I don't think it's possible anyway
due to the desktop PC hardware
- If a disk is broken the data loss should be limited to the data that
actually is on that disk, the rest of the JBOD should remain
functional (it is ok if it is not functional before a manual repair run)
Since I'm unable to determine the structure of the data (it could be
music, videos, applications, sharing any arbitrary data) I don't like
to simply mount the HDs in different directories.
The distribution is Debian Lenny. The recommondation from various
mailing list are to use a LVM but AFAIK it's not suitable for that.
Recently I got a hint to use UnionFS for that purpose.
What do you think? Will UnionFS fit here?
Thanks,
Florian
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