[CentOS] LVM, usb drives, Active Directory

Tue Dec 15 17:10:59 UTC 2009
Toby Bluhm <tkb at alltechmedusa.com>

Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I have a client with a handful of USB drives connected to a CentOS
> box.   I am charged with binding the USB drives together into a single
> LVM for a cheap storage data pool (10 x 1 TB usb drives = 10 TB cheap
> storage in a single mount point).
> 
> The next fun piece is how to incorporate that storage space into an
> existing Active Directory structure to apply AD acls for limited
> access.
> 
> I'd rather not use Samba, as that is its own infrastructure and
> maintains its own credentials database.
> 
> What are my best options?
> 


Why would you use USB disks? Even if you could put up with 
not-so-stellar speed, the tangle of cables & powerpacks would be messy 
and prone to accidental disconnect. On top of that, using only LVM to 
glue it all together would really exacerbate the disconnect problem. A 
single disk failure could bring the entire volume down with no recourse 
but to restore from backup.

That's another thing - is this data valuable? If so, you need to have an 
idea for backups.

Ditch the crazy USB scheme and get better hardware - raid/hotswap. And a 
10 drive, 10TB raid5 is also going to be a headache. There's been 
several recent discussions here about such matters - large volume 
filesystems, SW raid vs HW raid, raid types, LVM, etc. Look through the 
archives.


-- 
tkb