[nflug] Opinions on Linux and Massive Storage

Mon Jun 30 14:20:48 EDT 2008

Please keep us apprised of this development!  I'm in the process of trying to figure out how we're going to move forward with our environment...  If ZFS rocks the world, I'm certainly going to be interested.

Cheers!

Bob

 --
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
--Leonardo da Vinci

----- Original Message ----
From: Darin Perusich <Darin.Perusich at cognigencorp.com>
To: nflug at nflug.org
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 1:57:27 PM
Subject: Re: [nflug] Opinions on Linux and Massive Storage

I currently don't have ZFS deployed into production but all the testing 
and playing around I've done thus far has been very promising, at least 
I haven't run into any issues. I'm migrating our file server to a HA-ZFS 
setup within the next few months, I'm just starting to plan the project 
now. ZFS itself is certainly production ready, I know of a few 
cyrus-imap deployments on ZFS that have a massive amount of data, tons 
of small files and directories, and once they properly tuned things they 
run flawlessly. There is a lot of documentation out there on ZFS, google 
is your friend ;-).

I'll send you the contact info shortly.

Brad Bartram wrote:
> Thanks for the thoughts.
> 
> How has ZFS been for you?  I've looked into it but never quite got the
> feeling it was production ready - is that a fair assessment or am I
> mistaken?
> 
> Primarilly, this is going to be server to server communications.  A
> few clients that need immediate, high-speed, reliable access to big
> (~100GB) data sets for processing.
> 
> The money for the sparc, at this point isn't a huge deal.  We're
> already getting to the happy side of $100K to enter this project, so a
> few more dollars isn't going to bust the bank.  My big thing is
> scalability and reliability.  Within 12 - 18 months, I'm figuring on
> seeing Petabyte size storage, so I want to make sure the ground work
> is down correctly now.  It's not going to be too long before I'm over
> my head on this, so when I finally do hire a storage guy (or girl) to
> take the reigns, I don't want to have to backtrack - at least too
> much.
> 
> I'm definitely interested in finding out more from the Hitachi rep.
> You can send me his info off-list if you want.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Darin Perusich
> <Darin.Perusich at cognigencorp.com> wrote:
>> I understand that you're looking for Linux opinions but I'd strongly
>> recommend taking a look at Solaris 10 and ZFS, especially given what you're
>> looking to scale to. Solaris runs nicely on AMD/Intel hardware so you won't
>> need to be concerned with drop extra $$ on SPARC server, though given what
>> you'll be spending on SAN that probably won't matter too much ;-). Samba is
>> distributed with Solaris so it's fully supported by Sun and their tech
>> support is fantastic. Need I mention the Sun invented NFS....
>>
>> On the SAN side of things take a look at Hitachi's offerings. We have a HDS
>> 9570 array and this thing is bomb-proof! In the 3+ years it's been in
>> production there hasn't been one failure where it needed to be taken off
>> line, just about everything can be swapped hot. One of the controller boards
>> had a malfunction and they swapped it hot, zero downtime! I have a Sun V480
>> parked in front of it for our file server and it servers the same file
>> systems to about 50 XP workstations and about the same number of Linux
>> servers over NFS/CIFS.
>>
>> If you're interested I can send you the contact info for my local Hitachi
>> rep and the local tech as well. The tech use to work for EMC and StorageTek
>> so he can speak to just about all the other vender's products. He's told me
>> a few whoppers about EMC that I couldn't believe.
>>
>> Brad Bartram wrote:
>>> I know there are some people in this list that have experience with
>>> massive storage using linux.  By massive I mean >20TB range.
>>>
>>> I'd love to hear your thoughts on building out and optimizing a system
>>> that is fast, scalable, and reliable.  If you have opinions on direct
>>> attached storage as well as those of you running storage area
>>> networks.
>>>
>>> It's kind of a broad topic, but I'm about to embark on a major build
>>> out and want to avoid as many pitfalls as possible.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Brad
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> nflug mailing list
>>> nflug at nflug.org
>>> http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug
>> --
>> Darin Perusich
>> Unix Systems Administrator
>> Cognigen Corporation
>> 395 Youngs Rd.
>> Williamsville, NY 14221
>> Phone: 716-633-3463
>> Email: darinper at cognigencorp.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> nflug mailing list
>> nflug at nflug.org
>> http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug
>>
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-- 
Darin Perusich
Unix Systems Administrator
Cognigen Corporation
395 Youngs Rd.
Williamsville, NY 14221
Phone: 716-633-3463
Email: darinper at cognigencorp.com
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