On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:30:18AM -0500, Predrag Punosevac wrote: > My small LAB is looking to acquire two file servers in the very near > future. I am not much of a storage guy so I am soliciting opinion from > this community as the new file servers are likely to be running > DragonFly BSD for obvious reason (Hammer). > > One file server should be about 20TB and used by a group of about 20-30 > users. Another should be about 10-12 TB with no more than 10 users. > Following earlier advises I am thinking of setting up hardware RAID > based on one of LSI devices. We are in data mining business so moving > large amounts of data in particular via NFS is must for us. > > Are there any strong opinions? I was browsing little bit Newegg and I > see bunch of inexpensive Synology and Buffalo network storage systems. I > have mostly experience with Supermicro. Is there a significant > difference in the quality between those manufacturers?
Supermicro sells server-class hardware and the other brands mostly small SOHO boxes. Completely different performance and reliability target markets. A Supermicro-based server with a supported RAID adapter (Areca or LSI) and a SAS backplane should be fine. A 2U chassis can take up to 12 3.5" hard drives (+2x 2.5" ones) and should be largely enough for 20TB. Some 10Gb ethernet adapters are also supported if you really need NFS transfers to be fast. Have a look here: http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/ -- Francois Tigeot
