[nflug] Opinions on Linux and Massive Storage

[Darin Perusich]

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