Suggestions for a 10-20TB linux compatible storage array ?

[William Weaver]

I want to give my advice but I have a laundry list of questions that need
to be asked first.

Is only a single machine storing to the server or will it be multiple?
What type of backup are you using?
How about redundancy?
Any specs on data required transfer speed?
What type of local network do they have and is a network share an
acceptable solution?
Are they looking for a one time investment or do they want/need
future expansion?
Are you doing this work in house or is it contract based? This matters
mostly for budgetary reasons.

Initially I would suggest looking at connecting via a network share. While
USB 3.0 is theoretically faster you're going to be limited by your hard
drive speed. A gigabit network switch/router, which if they aren't on they
should be, allows for a file transfer connection that will max the hard
drives speed but doesn't suffer the issues of USB such as single access
point. This also allows for you to use a lightweight linux distro and  a
samba, nfs, or gluster network share depending on what OS's will have to
access it and your requirements. With that, 5k for a 20T box is easy. You
could easily make a 20G raid 1 for that price when you look at WD greens
being only 100 for 2T.

A quick ballpark figure.
AMD Bulldozer based PC built from scratch roughly 400-500. Most of that is
a case that has 12 front facing 5.25 slots example the Antec 1200.
20 WD reds 2TB roughly 2400. you can even bump to 3TB if you want to be
able to add more drives later
4 5.25 3/5 drive caddies. 400
1 SSD small sized for the OS - 100
RAID card, if needed. You may just do glusterfs or zfs pooling with
redundancy.


Here were're looking at a PC running a newer bulldozer core, which is a
consumer version of the AMD server CPUs, which are great for parallel
process but low single stream power, in a case that holds 20 physical
drives plus an SSD for the OS. You're also coming in at roughly 3/5ths of
your budget and exceeding specs substantially. Add in a phenominal RAID
card if needed and go to town.

Lastly you can always use the leftover power to run a few VMs to
consolidate a few seats for any software the license and hopefully reduce
overall cost. These VMs can even have access to the file share locally
through glusterfs if you want.

You could even go crazy and offer to build them two so they have crazy
levels of redunancy and a higher read and write speed using glusterfs
replication.

You have a lot of options, it feels like to me you just need to get all the
specs and customer desires worked out.

Will Weaver



On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I agree with Lennart on the USB thing. For a large dedicated storage
> array, USB is not going to be a reliable choice. Even USB3 can have issues.
>
> If your hardware doesn't have an eSATA port, the adaptors are usually
> affordable.
>
> The best of both worlds might be some NAS storage solutions that also
> support eSATA (and/or USB)
> On Feb 28, 2013 7:41 AM, "Lennart Sorensen" <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 07:16:19AM -0500, Dave Cramer wrote:
>> > Customer is looking for something under 5k, connected via USB, but I
>> think
>> > the connection type is flexible.
>>
>> USB?  Are they mad?  USB is often unreliable and it is slow.  I tried
>> connecting a 4.5TB external storage via USB because it was simple, and
>> it kept dropping off the bus under load a few times a day.  Switching to
>> eSATA on the same box made it perfectly reliable and much much faster.
>>
>> USB3 should be better, but not too many machines have that yet.  Could be
>> added of course.
>>
>> USB2 would take close to 4 days to transfer 10TB.
>>
>> Something like this might do the job:
>>
>> http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=14_207&item_id=040363
>>
>> eSATA, USB3 are both nice options (and USB2 compatible should you
>> want to).  Putting in 8x2TB or 3TB should give you 14 or 21TB storage
>> with RAID5.
>>
>> $400 for the box + 8 x $160 (WD Red 3TB) = $1680 for 21TB RAID5
>> $400 for the box + 8 x $120 (WD Red 2TB) = $1360 for 14TB RAID5
>>
>> A USB3 or eSATA controller if needed should be cheap.
>>
>> --
>> Len Sorensen
>> --
>> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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>
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