Topic: advice on NAS or SAN storeage solution

[dilligaf]

I would like to offer ftp storage to approx 25 remote clients.
They will want to save the data for up to 5 years.

I would like to end up with at least 4TB capacity for starters.

What level of raid would I need to use that could be recovered from easily/little down time in event of a disk failure?
I am looking at the 3ware 9500s series of cards.
I would use seagate TB hard drives.

I have looked at INTEL SS4200ENA ENTRY STORAGE SYSTEM SS4200-E and seems like a good idea, although maybe a little underpowered, so that is why I was hoping to utilize an SMEServer.

I will likely have two of these appliances (hopes of mirroring/replicating) for redundancy.

Any help / success stories greatly appreciated.
Maybe there is a better suited alternative (that still keeps everything in house)

[dilligaf]

I have read the documentation for SMEServer re: RAID.
It refers to software raid using 4-6 Drives - Software RAID 5 + 1 Hot-spare

If you use 4 1TB drives - you have the "software Raid 5" with 1 hot swap spare.

But how do you set up for 4TB initial storeage, with 1 hot swap spare?

And is a 3ware 9500s or LSI Logic MegaRAID Card a better solution than the software raid?
Thanks

[Stefano]

And is a 3ware 9500s or LSI Logic MegaRAID Card a better solution than the software raid?

yes, hw raid would be better  than sw one if
- raid controller is a REAL raid controller and not a cheap fake-raid one
- raid controller is fully supported
- raid controller is easy to find; will it fail, you can recover your data only if you find the same ctrl.

ciao
Stefano

[dilligaf]

How do you get more than one terabyte of total storege?
A card w/more connectors?

If you use 4 1TB drives - you have the "software Raid 5" with 1 hot swap spare.

But how do you set up for 4TB initial storeage, with 1 hot swap spare?

[m]

But how do you set up for 4TB initial storeage, with 1 hot swap spare?

Choose a 8 channel RAID card (e.g. 3WARE 9650SE-8) with Raid 6 support. Configure 7 active Raid 6 disks + 1 spare
With 8 x 1 TB drives you'll will end up with 5 TB net capacity.

[dilligaf]

thank you for all the feedback.
I priced a card to do this, card alone is $700.00 cdn, then need mainboard to support etc, etc,.
have read reviews on Openfiler, and FreeNas, Openfiler seems to be the most liked (http://linuxbsdos.com/2008/10/06/freenas-vs-openfiler/)
So I do not know what I am going to do at this point.

I sure don't want to invest  the big$ IBM or Intel have for their bigger setups.

[Stefano]

thank you for all the feedback.
I priced a card to do this, card alone is $700.00 cdn, then need mainboard to support etc, etc,.
have read reviews on Openfiler, and FreeNas, Openfiler seems to be the most liked (http://linuxbsdos.com/2008/10/06/freenas-vs-openfiler/)
So I do not know what I am going to do at this point.

I sure don't want to invest  the big$ IBM or Intel have for their bigger setups.

forgive me but... you wish to have a 4TB storage with redudancy.. such a storage should operate at least for 5 years..

now.. how much is your budget? because IMO we are talking about thousands $.. the problem here is NOT sw (SME/Openfiler/Freenas) but HW.. You have to invest.

oh.. just a question: what about backup? how do you think you will backup 4 TB of data?

Ciao
Stefano

[dilligaf]

Hi Stefano,
I understand what you mean (it is going to cost "real" money)
I did not expect to do it for free.
And you are right on the backup, idea was to have a second server (exact same) syncing, so cost increases again.
Dan

forgive me but... you wish to have a 4TB storage with redudancy.. such a storage should operate at least for 5 years..

now.. how much is your budget? because IMO we are talking about thousands $.. the problem here is NOT sw (SME/Openfiler/Freenas) but HW.. You have to invest.

oh.. just a question: what about backup? how do you think you will backup 4 TB of data?

Ciao
Stefano

[m]

Dan,
you can expect an invest of approx. 4,500,00 EUR w/o tax for a 16 x 500 GB drive system with 6 TB net capacity with Open-E software included.
The same once more if you want replication and failover (which is supported by Open-E).
And as redundancy does not mean backup, you need a much bigger third system for backup.

I had a closer look at FreeNas, OpenFiler and Open-E.
FreeNas and OpenFiler don't have failover functionality out of the box and the configuration of OpenFiler is a real nightmare. Open-E appears to be the one that is at best production ready, with the only disadvantage that it is not free.