Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>
>
> John, you're right. iSCSI isn't an SMB replacement as I have learned
> through all of this. SMB is good for sharing data between many PC's,
> and even servers, but from what I understand it's also slower that
> iSCSI and won't allow me to scale the storage by simply adding another
> cheap server to the network. With iSCSI I could / should be able todo
> that.
>
> OR am I approaching this from a different angle? If I wanted to setup
> a server to serve content (in this case file storage, www, email &
> SQL) to a network of computers, would iSCSI have served the purpose?
> Or should I have kept using SMB? I am looking for a way to quickly
> expand the whole setup though. If we need more space, then I just want
> to add another cheap server with a 1TB HDD, and have it available on
> the network. It is my impression that I could use iSCSI, probably
> together with XFS, to accomplish this?
You can, if you connect the iscsi block devices into one machine that can
combine them in one or more md raid devices, put a filesystem on them, and
export via nfs and/or smb to the systems that want shared space. However, the
system exporting the filesystem becomes a single point of failure and you'd
probably want a separate LAN with gigabit and jumbo frames for the iscsi
connections for performance. In these days of cheap 2TB drives, it's pretty
easy to just cram whatever storage you need into one box - or add an external
drive case if it won't fit. Why not just toss an 8-port pci-X SATA card in one
of those towers and fill the bays with drives?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com