[CentOS] LVM, usb drives, Active Directory
Toby Bluhm
tkb at alltechmedusa.com
Tue Dec 15 17:10:59 UTC 2009
Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I have a client with a handful of USB drives connected to a CentOS
> box. I am charged with binding the USB drives together into a single
> LVM for a cheap storage data pool (10 x 1 TB usb drives = 10 TB cheap
> storage in a single mount point).
>
> The next fun piece is how to incorporate that storage space into an
> existing Active Directory structure to apply AD acls for limited
> access.
>
> I'd rather not use Samba, as that is its own infrastructure and
> maintains its own credentials database.
>
> What are my best options?
>
Why would you use USB disks? Even if you could put up with
not-so-stellar speed, the tangle of cables & powerpacks would be messy
and prone to accidental disconnect. On top of that, using only LVM to
glue it all together would really exacerbate the disconnect problem. A
single disk failure could bring the entire volume down with no recourse
but to restore from backup.
That's another thing - is this data valuable? If so, you need to have an
idea for backups.
Ditch the crazy USB scheme and get better hardware - raid/hotswap. And a
10 drive, 10TB raid5 is also going to be a headache. There's been
several recent discussions here about such matters - large volume
filesystems, SW raid vs HW raid, raid types, LVM, etc. Look through the
archives.
--
tkb
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