[CentOS] Centos as a file storage/backup destination (Advice)

Sun Nov 8 18:26:01 UTC 2009
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Roland Roland wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> am considering setting up centos as a file storage/ backup destination 
> for Mac's TimeMachine.
>
> all my users would get synced directly to specific folders on this 
> machine..
> needless to say space is of importance. where every user has an 
> average 200 GB of data to b synced (entire system)...
> I have 27 users hence 27 *200 equals to almost 6 TB so I was 
> considering getting either 4 * 1.5 TB or 6 * 1 TB to be used on one 
> PIV with a 1 GB ethernet.

I would think you should use raid for this, at least raid 5, which 
requires N+1 for N drives worth of storage.  and you probably want a 
hotspare in case a drive fails.

>  
> but the thing is, I'm an expert with this! so I'm seeking your help..
> is there any other way to do so ? is there any limitation 
> hardware/centos wise for the amount of drives available on a system?
> is Motherboard available sata/ide slots is the only limitation? how 
> about using a USB hub and plugging them as such?
>  

USB drives are quite slow, you want to use SATA for this.   you can get 
PCI-E sata expansion cards, ideally on PCI-E x4 slots which have 
sufficient bandwidth (pci-e x1 would be a bottleneck for more than a 
couple drives)

I'd  suggest getting a 'storage server' with sufficient drive bays and 
channels for what you're doing.

a server like 
http://www.asaservers.com/config.asp?config_id=ASA4002-X2Q-S2-S holds 8 
hotswap drive bays and is quite customizable.