[nflug] Opinions on Linux and Massive Storage

[Darin Perusich]

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
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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