On 1/6/2010 2:35 PM, Boris Epstein wrote: > > we are trying to set > up some storage servers to run under Linux You should also consider FreeBSD 8.0, which has the newest version of ZFS up and running stably on it. I use Linux for most server tasks, but for big storage, Linux just doesn't have anything like this yet. Yeah, yeah, btrfs someday, I know. But today, ZFS is where it's at. It's the easiest way of managing large pools of storage I know of short of a Drobo, and Drobos have big problems of their own. I'm not recommending OpenSolaris on purpose. For the last few years, it was the only stable production-quality implementation of ZFS, but with FreeBSD 8.0, it just lost that advantage. I think, as a Linux fan, you will be happier with FreeBSD than OpenSolaris. > storage volume would be in the range specified: 8-15 TB. That puts you right on the edge of workability with 32-bit hardware. ext3's limit on 32-bit is 8 TB, and you can push it to 16 TB by switching to XFS or JFS. Best to use 64-bit hardware if you can.