On 1/6/2010 2:35 PM, Boris Epstein wrote:
we are trying to set up some storage servers to run under Linux
You should also consider FreeBSD 8.0, which has the newest version of ZFS up and running stably on it. I use Linux for most server tasks, but for big storage, Linux just doesn't have anything like this yet.
Yeah, yeah, btrfs someday, I know. But today, ZFS is where it's at. It's the easiest way of managing large pools of storage I know of short of a Drobo, and Drobos have big problems of their own.
I'm not recommending OpenSolaris on purpose. For the last few years, it was the only stable production-quality implementation of ZFS, but with FreeBSD 8.0, it just lost that advantage. I think, as a Linux fan, you will be happier with FreeBSD than OpenSolaris.
storage volume would be in the range specified: 8-15 TB.
That puts you right on the edge of workability with 32-bit hardware. ext3's limit on 32-bit is 8 TB, and you can push it to 16 TB by switching to XFS or JFS. Best to use 64-bit hardware if you can.