oops, pushed replied too soon :) On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Les Mikesell<lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > Rudi Ahlers wrote: >> >> The thing is, how will these kind of option perform in a hosting >> environment where downtime isn't at all an option. We have backup >> generators, UPS, load balanced networks, etc Even the Tyan / >> SuperMicro machines that I'm looking at will have redundant power >> supplies & hard drives. >> >> But the one piece of of the puzzle that I don't understand, will a >> self-build-Linux NAS device, or even Openfiler / FreeNAS give us that >> kind of uptime. > > High quality servers running an enterprise linux version can give you > the same uptime as dedicated hardware if you are comfortable with not > doing updates. For example I still have a RH 7.3 based box running that > has only been down a few minutes in about 7 years (had to move it) but I > wouldn't try that with anything exposed to the internet. I did replace > several drives and rebuild the raids over that time - and it is probably > about to die of old age soon. > >> The other thing which I would like to also get to, is that we could do >> more with a Linux based distro than with a off-the-shelf NAS. For >> example I could setup storage space for users and build custom >> applications that could manage it all - for example give a hosting >> client a reseller account with 1TB space and he could resell that to >> his clients. And I could go as far as setting up SMB / NFS / iSCSI / >> rsyn / SSH / FTP / sFTP / podcast / HTTP / etc, i.e. other protocols >> which a NAS may not necessarily support. And I could even use it as a >> dedicated web farm if I feel like it, running HTTP & MySQL as well if >> the server has enough RAM & CPU. >> >> Ideally I would like have a highly-redundant storage device which can >> be used by numerous users, and also host Virtual Machines on it. So IO >> will be the biggest concern, in terms of speed, with reliability the >> 2nd biggest concern. >> >> I'll run RAID 10 (1+0) for speed & reliability, and use 1TB / 1.5TB >> RAID edition server grade SATAII hard drives with hardware RAID - >> although I also think software RAID on a decent CPU could perform >> better. But the hardware RAID cards have battery backup which gives >> better reliability. Then I would like to build 2 devices, each syncing >> with the other one. > > The 2 device failover is the tricky part and it introduces some new ways > to fail. I've always preferred to keep things simple with mirrored > disks in a hot-swap chassis so the likely failure (single disk) doesn't > slow down operation and can be replaced at a convenient time. The less > likely motherboard or power supply failure will cause some down time > while you swap the disks into a spare chassis, though. And you still > need off-site backups to cover other types of problems. For this reason I would be using server grade motherboards, chassis, drives, etc. All the drive would be hot swappable, and the PSU would be hot swappable & redundant as well. The only parts that doesn't have redundancy is the motherboard, CPU, RAM & disk controller. But, for redundancy I'm thinking of putting together 2 identical servers which could be setup in active-active sync. Openfiler offers this out of the box, but it's still a Linux distro, so I'm looking at giving this a go and see what how it performs. > >> The other question is, how well will my own Linux / UNIX based NAS >> perform? Surely these companies who build their own NAS devices spend >> a lot of time fine-tuning the OS to deliver the best performance, and >> probably spend a lot of time researching and testing different >> hardware devices and configurations to see what works best? > > I'd try the canned openfiler/nexentastore installs to see if they meet > your needs in terms of functionality and performance and if so, then > decide whether you want to use a supported version or duplicate their > work setting up something on generic linux/opensolaris. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell at gmail.com > > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers CEO, SoftDux Hosting Web: http://www.SoftDux.com Office: 087 805 9573 Cell: 082 554 7532