Hello,
I'm looking to build a CentOS server (or servers) with a SAN to support a large user base. Question: if you had a budget of $25K (or more if necessary), what you build? I'm interested mainly what hardware and software is best supported by the OS, but anything you have to say on the subject is welcome.
Thanks, Jack
Jack Bailey jack@internetguy.net wrote:
Hello, I'm looking to build a CentOS server (or servers) with a SAN to support a large user base.
The storage solution will depend heavily on the topology.
All servers in same closet (same 25'): Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
All servers within the same building: Storage over TCP/IP (iSCSI) or Fibre-Channel Arbitrated-Loop (FC-AL)
Furthermore, I need to know ... - Your apps - Your clients - Other uses of the storage you can think of
Question: if you had a budget of $25K (or more if necessary), what you build?
I apologize for this, but I'd feel I'd be professionally negligent if I didn't at least point it out. If you have $25K to spend, and can afford recurring costs of $1-2K/year, then I'd highly recommend RHEL AS for the support aspects.
I'm interested mainly what hardware and software is best supported by the OS, but anything you have to say on the subject is welcome.
The HCL will at least cover the hardware compatibility aspects. RHEL AS comes with come clustering-failover capability when devices are attached to the same SAN.
I would really need to know what sort of topology you are considering, as well as the main uses of your servers/storage.
Hello, I'm looking to build a CentOS server (or servers) with a SAN to support a large user base.
I apologize for this, but I'd feel I'd be professionally negligent if I didn't at least point it out. If you have $25K to spend, and can afford recurring costs of $1-2K/year, then I'd highly recommend RHEL AS for the support aspects.
I'm interested mainly what hardware and software is best
supported by
the OS, but anything you have to say on the subject is welcome.
The HCL will at least cover the hardware compatibility aspects. RHEL AS comes with come clustering-failover capability when devices are attached to the same SAN.
I would really need to know what sort of topology you are considering, as well as the main uses of your servers/storage.
Be careful when buying from RH. We built a SAN solution with GFS using their engineers to spec their own software this last year. They did not know that it required !3! boxen running GFS in order to guarantee continuous access to the SAN in case of a single machine failure.
While we have it running and stable now, the problem was very serious in the beginning and RH was of literally no help at all. We paid for support but found out they have ONE qualified GFS engineer in the whole company.
-jeff
Hello, I'm looking to build a CentOS server (or servers) with a SAN to support a large user base.
The storage solution will depend heavily on the topology.
All servers in same closet (same 25'): Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
All servers within the same building: Storage over TCP/IP (iSCSI) or Fibre-Channel Arbitrated-Loop (FC-AL)
Furthermore, I need to know ...
- Your apps
- Your clients
- Other uses of the storage you can think of
Mail (POP/IMAP/Webmail), that's it. 50K to 100K users. Client is not happy with his current vendor. All the servers would be in the same building, likely in the same cabinet or adjacent cabinets.
Question: if you had a budget of $25K (or more if necessary), what you build?
I apologize for this, but I'd feel I'd be professionally negligent if I didn't at least point it out. If you have $25K to spend, and can afford recurring costs of $1-2K/year, then I'd highly recommend RHEL AS for the support aspects.
I'll ask the client to consider that.
Thanks.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Fibre-Channel Arbitrated-Loop (FC-AL)
Any special reason for not going with fabric topology? I remember having Red Hat 7.x servers with Qlogic HBAs years ago working perfectly in fabric topology. Also, some swtiches (Brocade for example) can emulate loop for devices that don't support fabric directly.
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Aleksandar Milivojevic -
Bryan J. Smith -
Jack Bailey -
Jeff Coleman