[CentOS] OT - Linux NAS for Windows Environment

Tue Jan 31 17:10:38 UTC 2006
Troy Engel <tengel at fluid.com>

Ed Morrison wrote:
> I'm looking to find a Linux NAS solution for a Windows network.  Looking
> into FreeNAS and OpenFiler.  Anyone using these or any other solution? 
> Any comments/suggestions?

>From the longtime experience direction, be sure to figure out the
snapshotting upfront; a good snapshot rotation can save you so much pain
it's not funny; many commercial NAS (NetApp, SnapServer, EMC, etc) have
this integrated. When looking at a DIY linux NAS, you may have to roll
it up.

We snapshot roughly like so: [8a,12p,4p M-F] [nightly 2 nights
retention] -- this setup is enough to provide instantanious file restore
without having to deal with the backups. (classic "hey IT, I deleted a
file last night...")

Personally I've used rdiff as a snapshot-esque tool and it works pretty
well, but not very good when the underlying link dies; it's not the
exact right tool. rsnapshot is also in the same vein, but again it's not
quite the exact snapshot type of thing that a NetApp provides. I bet
there are better choices out there...

hth,
-te

-- 
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid, Inc | http://www.fluid.com