New media storage server build - Page 8

Solaris is generally used as servers; not as desktops and by limiting the supported hardware you do get better reliability.

I understand your point that; as I'd like to see much broader support from the OS than I do.

Still, for what I use it for it works


ZFS is in its infancy; and over time I'm guessing it will only get better.


Cheers,

Thanks!!

kapone,

Were you able to get port multipliers to work in OpenSolaris? What kind of performance are you getting in RAID-Z?

A quick question of you experts.

With the raid 5 nas configurations you guys are running do I have to have all my drives up front or can I add to the capacity of the raid by adding hard drives down the road?

By this I mean do I have to reconfigure the raid and lose my data to add capacity or can I simply plug in another drive into the array.

I'd like to start with 2 1tb drives and add capacity down the road as the price/mb of large drives drops down the road.

Thanks

I'm not aware of this being possible, not if you're running "true" RAID5. Things like unRAID will do this though it isn't really RAID5 in the standard sense. ZFS can do this if you're doing jbod or mirror. Mirrors will become RAID10 as you add space.

ZFS and Windows Home Server both support adding capacity to an existing storage pool by just adding drives. In contrast, changing a RAID configuration almost certainly means wipe-and-rebuild.

--Don

kapone,

Can you pm the place where you bought your motherboard from? I can't find it for a good price anywhere.

Yes, but in fairness it's added as another "storage pool" so adding a single drive isn't particularly effective.

UnRAID is good; but if you want higher throughput you do need something like ZFS or something similar.

Wish I could fit a NetApps filer in my basement

Yes, but in fairness it's added as another "storage pool" so adding a single drive isn't particularly effective.[/quote]

I'm not really sure what you mean. I'm guessing you are talking about keeping multiple copies of files. Both ZFS, and WHS, allow you to set policies on a per-share basis (ZFS offers better, with per-directory), to control whether files are duplicated or not. And for both ZFS and WHS, you add a drive to the existing storage pool, and for both ZFS and WHS, if you file is supposed to be duplicated, they will automatically make sure that copies of the the file are kept on different physical drives.

For both systems, if you have a running system, and you add a drive, you get more storage. If your existing storage is completely full, and you want duplication on the new storage, then yes you'll need to add multiple drives.

But both ZFS and WHS are so much better for "regular" users, in terms of being able to flexibly add storage over time. I think ZFS offers many more capabilities, but I think that WHS is easier to use.

--Don

Changing a Software (mdadm) raid is not a wipe and rebuild - it can now grow to add in new discs (I grew by 4 disk array up to 6 without any problems)

No, I'm talking about protecting the data. If you're building out your ZFS as a JBOD; you don't have redundant copies without snapshots. And even with the snapshots if you don't have some measure of redundancy you're exposed by adding one drive as a single point of failure.


ZFS recommends either a mirror, raidz or raidz2 configuration.

Storage on a striped array (stripe or raidz) doesn't store files on a single physical drive.


As cheap as storage is (500 GB < $0.25/GB) not adding redundant storage is a bad idea IMO.


I don't find zfs to be particularly difficult; but I'm a veteran Unix user so I am quite comfortable with typing out commands.

For "super easy" there's also solutions like Infrant/NetGear's ReadyNAS or the DROBO product. Both allow you to add storage on the fly; grow from 1 - 4 drives and change spindle sizes on the fly.

The bare cost of the box is $500 for the DROBO; I don't recall the ReadyNAS price.

The downside is they're limited to 4 spindles which means you need to buy more boxes to grow your device beyond ~3TB (4x1TB in Raid5) of usable, protected storage.

UnRAID works and is solid -- the only reason I've moved to ZFS is it's also a learning machine for me.

Cheers,

If you use a hardware RAID card with "Online Capacity Expansion" you can do it. I use a 3Ware 9550SX-8LP card in my workstation/media server. I started with two drives in a stripe set and copied my two other disks of data to it. My initial two disks were connected to the mobo SATA ports without RAID of any sort. Then I added one of the empty disks to the controller and converted to RAID 5. Then I added the other disk to the array and expanded it. Then I expanded the file system with Partition Magic. Some time later, I expanded it again with another disk and extended the file system again. I now have 5 WD 400 GB RAID edition disks in the array. For future expansion, I'll buy a set of 3 1TB disks and create a new array instead of buying more small disks. Then I can copy all the data over to the new array and retire or repurpose those 400GB disks. After that I can continue expanding with 1TB disks.

Array expansion or migration (RAID 1 to RAID 5) does take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to unload the data and recreate from scratch. The array is online the whole time. My experience with 3Ware has been very good. If I was doing it again today, I would probably buy the PCI Express version since PCI-X mobos are getting harder to find except in the Operton/Xeon space.

- Mike

Have just been skimming this thread a bit. Not sure if it has been mentioned or not but here is a nice 8 port SATA PCI-X controller card that works with ZFS on Solaris http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815121009

It doesn't have any raid functions but it's an easy way to add SATA ports, and if you are contemplating ZFS you don't need the RAID functions anyway.

I noticed that card also, and I am considering building a server using 3 of these cards in this case

http://www.supermicro.com/products/c...46TQ-R900B.cfm

Also, if anyone is familiar with FreeBSD, is RAID-Z functioning in the latest 7 beta?

kapone,

Can you recommend any memory that is known to perform well with the board you have?

Thanks.

Linux supports RAID5/RAID6 online capacity expansion via adding new drives and by expanding the size of the partitions. (Expanding the sizes of the partitions works well if you're building an array with some drives that are smaller than others, and you replace them at a later date.)

Ok, so I have read this a couple times and I know I am going to ask a couple dumb questions, so here we go.

For the controller card, the consensus seems to be with with a Sil based SATA card, plugged into a Sil3726 based SATA2 Port multiplier. So with one PCI SIL card with 4 inputs, you can get up to 20 HD's attached to 4 port multipliers at to data transfer of 3/MBS?

Is there any benefit going with a 2322 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card? Which based on my research, can support 8 HD's on one card?

So clearly you would need three of these cards to reach the capacity of one of the Sil based SATA cards. Am I missing something, why would someone pay more for the lesser option?

Who says you can't? Take a linux-box and run the ONTAP-simulator on it... Doesn't 100% of the functionality but it has many

F

Kapone, thank you for the response. I think I have been bitten by a bug here. My other question has to do with the mobo and processor choices. How much strain is your processor under? Do you really need all the HP? Like you said, it doesn't hurt. I was thinking of going a different direction and using a mini-itx board with a mobile dual core processor, in a thin client case as the controller {external power supply}. I found an Intel mini itx board with 3.6 gb of ram, and a pci-x card slot. Here in NYC, space is at a premium!!!!

MSI Industrial GM965 Core 2 Duo Mobile Mini-ITX Main board.
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9803

Processor: Intel Socket P Core2Duo, CoreDuo & Celeron M @ FSB 667/800 MHz
• Xhipset: Intel GM965 + ICH8M
• Memory: 240pin DDR2 667/800 DIMM Socket X2 up to 4GB
• BIOS: AWARD 512KB Flash ROM

Apart from cost and future expansion, what am I missing?

kapone,

I need help with memory selection for the s5360 board. Please check your pm.

BTW, for those folks looking to build a new NAS or add a lot of capacity to an existing one, Best Buy has on sale this week the Hitachi 1TB external USB drive for $199 (no rebate needed). Normally, this is not interesting because a lot of vendors use 2 500GB drives to get 1 TB of storage to the user. This unit (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1177112455081) however uses a single 7K1000 SATA 1 TB drive internally! It's pretty easy to remove from the case (http://www.johnle.com/guide/hitachi/), and you get a new 1 TB SATA drive and a USB to SATA external case to use with an older SATA disk at a bargain price.

Even though it's sold out online, they are available at local best buys at this price, plus there is a coupon circulating that lets you get 10% off on each one. That makes the price for 1 TB of disk at $180+tax out the door, no rebates, and a cost/GB of storage that is better than most of the 500GB deals available now.

I cleaned out the 4 that were left at my local best buy (I needed to add space to my NAS server as my R5000-HD coupled with SageTV burns a lot of storage recording lots of premium cable HD) and got 10% off on each drive with no hassle or rebate.

While the cost/GB is only slightly better than the best 500Gb deal you can find, it takes 1/2 the number of SATA ports as the 500 GB drives, approx 1/2 the power consumption, and half the space in hot-swap slots. Plus these drives are REALLY fast.

I have never seen a deal on 1 TB drives anywhere close to this price, so if you want to move to TB class RAID5 arrays, this is the best chance you are going in quite awhile.

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks for the heads up Mike.

I went to four Best Buys and was only to find two of these drives. If was hoping to get at least four.

I might try another Best Buy, but it all depends on the traffic today.

Have you tried to take them out of the case yet? Any problems?

Kapone
Can you suggest a competent motherboard with PCI-X? I've got a 3ware 9550-8 and need an inexpensive motherboard solution and would prefer on-board video.

Additionally, I'm running XP MCE and XP Pro on two desktop machines and I'm looking for some advice on what OS to run on the server. Should I upgrade one of the desktops to Vista and load XP on the server, or purchase an old copy of Server 2003? Thanks for any and all help.
JB