[CentOS] Cluster Help

Tue Oct 17 18:01:15 UTC 2006
Sherwyn Greene <sgreene at kentz-ojs.com>

Thanks for the info 


Sherwyn Greene
Planner / I.T. Technician
Project Controls Dept.
Kentz-OJ's E&I Services J.V.
+1 (868) 648-0876

-----Original Message-----
From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf
Of Steve Bonds
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 1:56 PM
To: centos at centos.org
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Cluster Help

On 10/17/06, Sherwyn Greene wrote:

> Yes, I would like to have a shared storage setup, the question is  can 
> I do it from the scsi cards I have & if so what other equipment I need 
> to have this setup.

This is actually a fairly complicated question-- more than a mere CentOS
mailing list can likely answer to the level of detail you're going to need.
If you have not set up shared storage before, you may want to find a local
consultant to help out.

With that said, yes, you can use your existing SCSI cards provided you find
the right kind of storage and your SCSI cards are "differential"
SCSI (e.g. low-voltage differential).  There are tons of vendors, large and
small, that would be eager to take your money and sell you a disk array that
would work.  I would suggest the following requirements to jump-start your
search:
  + dual SCSI channels from each host compatible with your existing cards
     - so if one card dies you can keep working
  + RAID-5 in hardware
  + battery-backed cache on the RAID controller
     - so you can survive a power loss with minimal data lost
     - you probably want a battery that will last at least 7 days, perhaps
longer
  + hot-swap disks
  + 24x7 support including on-site hardware replacement
     - if you can get by with less, you probably don't need a cluster...
  + [optional] automatic hot spare disks (these take over for a failed disk
until you get it replaced)
     - the need for these depends on how quickly you're likely to replace a
dead disk as well as how many disks you have total

EMC and HP/Compaq both make excellent, if expensive, storage.  This might be
a good place to start your vendor search since this will set an upper limit
on how much it's likely to cost.

Again-- seek competent local help.  I don't think you can learn enough about
what to do from this mailing list.  ;-)

  -- Steve
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