[CentOS] Slightly OT: which hardware for CentOS file server (Samba, 2 To storage, 50 users)?

On 4/12/2010 1:40 PM, Gé Weijers wrote:
>
>
>> I'd support the above hardware as a minimum - it appears most will be
> reading, thus software RAID1
>> will work just fine - If there are many different files, I'd go for
>> more smaller disks - say 8 by
>> 500G in RAID1, thus the ability to spread the files over more spindles
>> as this may become the
>> bottleneck if all the files are on a single 2T drive.
>
> Using 8 drives is going to significantly increase the cost, because
> you'd need 8 SATA interfaces and 8 drive bays. Otherwise I agree. A
> RAID-10 setup (striped mirrors) will probably give the best performance.

Or, if the file usage can be broken down into logical groups, take any 
even-numbered set of disks, make RAID1 mirrors, and mount them into a 
sensible directory layout.  In return for a little bit more work in 
managing the space you get the ability to separate things into groups 
that won't compete for the same disk head position, and you will be able 
to recover the data off of any single disk.  Striped mirrors will give 
you better performance when accessing a single file - multiple 
independent raids might do better for multiuser access, though.

-- 
    Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com