[CentOS] settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

Rudi Ahlers wrote:

> This raises an interesting question. What do you do in this kind of
> scenario? How do you upgrade a NAS / SAN with say 5 / 10 TB worth of data?

Lots of the more modern enterprise arrays support online upgrades.
Some of them even support re-distributing data across the new spindles
to maximize performance/limit hot spots.

I personally wouldn't want to purchase any storage array that will
have important data on it that doesn't have these abilities.

My favorite storage company - 3par has some of the more advanced online
optimizations, sample -

http://www.3par.com/documents/3PAR-do-ds-08.0.pdf

Grow data online, convert between RAID levels online, migrate data
between spindle types(FC<->SATA) online etc. Create a volume, and
you never have to worry about answering the question 'is it really
optimal?' because you can change it at any time without application
impact or downtime.

nate