On Sun, 2009-11-08 at 10:26 -0800, John R Pierce wrote: > 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. ---- agreed but I am not a fan of RAID-5 any more because it is so slow. Suggest RAID 10/0+1 Also, you probably are going to have partition off each user because Time Machine will claim up to 2 TB each instance as sparse files and if you don't partition, you will find the first ones to setup will claim a lot more space than you had intended. Do some research into how Time Machine actually operates. Craig -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.