Topic: Building storage server, 4x400GB hard drives?

[adamk]

Hello,

I am very new to the SME server, and pretty green to Linux in general.  With that said, what I would like to do is to make a data storage server to backup about half a dozen PC's.  I want to buy four 400 GB drives and raid them 2 and 2 for a total storage space of 800 GB.  Is that possible to do with the software raid?  The only info I have been able to find on my own talks about raiding only 2 hard drives.   What is the easiest (and cheapest) way to get more than 500 GB of raided storage?

Thank you in advance.

[AidansDad]

I think you'll probably need to use one of the SME supported RAID cards.  I've used a 3ware RAID card with success.  Build your array with the cards utility, then install SME with the single disk option.

I'm pretty sure that the software raid only supports raid 1 (mirroring)

[Boris]

SME V7 (when finished and released) will support RAID5. Thus 4x400Gb RAID5 drives will have 1.2Tb usable space and still have fault tolerance.

[adamk]

Thank you for the replies.  Do you know if 7.0 pre1 has raid5 working?  If so, is there any documentation or a procedure for setting up such a system?  

I will check out the 3ware cards if raid5 isn't usable currently.

[Boris]

SME v7 Pre1 will use RAID5 option as adefault if it finds all four drives during installation. It still have some bugs (check bug tracker) and recommended for testing/debuging environments only.

[mrkicker]

Have a look at http://www.openfiler.com/
 openfiler. It supports most raid cards for doing raid 5 as its better to do a hardware eaid 5 than software. It also has support for iSCSI which could make things easier for doing backups. I also think i read something about bacula in its documentation as well. Note: bacula is a linux backup suite that windows clients can connect to.

[electroman00]

mrkicker

Do you have the openfiler on 7pre1?

[mrkicker]

openfiler is a seperate distribution on its own. I spose with the right brain you could add it to sme as its running on top of centos atm but i am mearly a linux newbie and just came accross openfiler the other day.

[electroman00]

I didn't look at it real close thought it was something to add on.

A whole distro hey....

Will have a better look now.

Thanks

[electroman00]

Took a better look and it's just what I'm looking for to

install on my old NAS's

Wow ..... now I have more PooP-ToDo.

Thanks ....hope I can someday give you some PooP-ToDo

Now I just have to figure out how to get it on a headless NAS.

No video card in it.

Does anyone know howto make the video output redirect to the TTY0 RS-232.

It does have a 232 port on it, well it didn't out of the box but it does now.

[mrkicker]

have a look on the centos 3-3 doco's and forums they might be able to help you theri. If you get it running keep us posted. Wot sort of nas's are they??

[electroman00]

I have Maxtor 3000/4000 and Intel Inbusiness Storage Station which
both use the same mobo but are packaged differently and run diff
sofftware, software basicly the same just moded for the two companies.

The base OS is freeBSD 5.3.

I started a forum and I have only one post.

a link to maxibss

[stiperstones]

electroman00
This might be of intrest to you

FreeNAS
https://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas
FreeNAS is a Free NAS (Network Attached Storage) server supporting: CIFS
(samba), FTP, NFS protocols, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB
configuration interface. FreeNAS take less than 16MB when installed on
Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

use headless as well http controlled

[electroman00]

Oh.....Wow ..... now I really have more PooP-ToDo.

That one looks real promising.

Going to look at it now.

Thanks sooooo much.

Cool !!

[electroman00]

Well i looked at it and it's real nice.

I don't know that this is the right forum to post about NAS stuff.

Anyone wishing to continue this NAS stuff can post to a new forum I setup.

New Forum Link

I don't have a lot of bandwidth but then again there are only 2 users
and I'm one of them......hehe.

Thanks guy's