Linux Storage system: looking for advices Post: 302384126

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Special Forums Hardware Filesystems, Disks and Memory Linux Storage system: looking for advices Post 302384126 by Loic Domaigne on Monday 4th of January 2010 05:52:11 AM

01-04-2010

Registered User

Linux Storage system: looking for advices

Gidday!

I'd like to setup a storage server for a friend of mine (he is a hobby photographer, and he produces about 100Gb pictures monthly). My friend has the following PC-Server-like system:

AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor 4850e.
ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI motherboard with 6 SATA connectors.
3Gb RAM.
6 SATA HD of different capacity (ranging from 1.2 - 2 Tb) and manufacturers.
1 Adaptec RAID Controller 1220SA able to create RAID 0, 1, JBOD array.

Currently, the SATA connectors are occupied as follow: 1 is used by the DVD writer, 4 by SATA HD and 1 is free. 2 SATA HDs are connected to the Adaptec RAID controller.

Using this system, we'd like to create a Linux based storage server. Basically,
the disk arrays should be used to hold the OS and the regular data (pictures). To face possible HD failures or unwanted deletions, some scripts shall backup periodically the important pictures to an external RAID-5 NAS.

The requirements for the storage solution are:

to get as much storage capacity as possible,
in case of a disk crash, it is acceptable to loose the data on the disk (the important data are backup on the NAS), BUT it is not acceptable to loose the entire storage.
the storage should be flexible, i.e. allow failed drives to be replaced or allow to replace HDs with bigger HDs if required.
the storage should be easy to use. Ideally, the 6 drives should be exposed as 1 virtual drive to outside.
the storage should accessible from a MacBook (using for instance, NFS). As a matter of fact, my friend work-out his picture from his MAC and the storage should be integrated as seamlessly as possible in the "MAC world".

I initially thought of creating a logical volume with LVM containing the 6 drives, set-up an ext3 file system than spans the whole volume and finally mount the volume to a well known location (e.g. /srv/data). I am afraid however that with this scheme, a single HD failure causes the entire storage to fail.

What would you recommend, given the above PC configuration and requirements for the storage? Buying additional Hardware (e.g. RAID controller) could eventually be an option.

Any ideas, pointers or links are welcome.

Thanks in advance,
Lo�c.

Loic Domaigne

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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS

mega_sas

mega_sas(7D)							      Devices							      mega_sas(7D)

NAME

       mega_sas - SCSI HBA driver for LSI MegaRAID SAS controller

DESCRIPTION

       The mega_sas MegaRAID controller host bus adapter driver  is a  SCSA-compliant  nexus  driver that supports the Dell PERC 5/E, 5/i, 6/E and
       6/i RAID controllers, the IBM ServeRAID-MR10k SAS/SATA  controller and  the  LSI  MegaRAID  SAS/SATA  8308ELP,  8344ELP,  84016E,  8408ELP,
       8480ELP, 8704ELP, 8704EM2, 8708ELP, 8708EM2, 8880EM2 and 8888ELP series of controllers.

       Supported  RAID	features  include RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 6, RAID spans 10, 50 and 60, online capacity expansion (OCE), online RAID level
       migration (RLM), auto resume after loss of  system power during arrays, array rebuild or reconstruction (RLM) and configurable stripe  size
       up  to  1MB. Additional supported RAID features include check consistency for background data integrity, patrol read for media scanning and
       repairing, 64 logical drive support, up to 64TB LUN support, automatic rebuild and global and dedicated hot spare support.

CONFIGURATION

       The mega_sas.conf file contains no user configurable parameters. Please configure your hardware through the related  BIOS  utility  or  the
       MegaCli	configuration  utility.  If  you  want to install to a drive attached to a mega_sas HBA, you should create the virtual drive first
       from the BIOS before running the Solaris install. You can obtain the MegaCli utility from the LSI website.

       The mega_sas device can support up to  64 virtual disks. Note that BIOS numbers the virtual disks as 1 through 64, however in  the  Solaris
       operating  environment virtual disks are numbered from 0 to 63.	Also note that SAS and SATA drives cannot be configured into the same vir-
       tual disk.

KNOWN PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS

       The mega_sas driver does not support the LSI MegaRAID SAS 8204ELP, 8204XLP, 8208ELP, and 8208XLP controllers.

FILES

       /kernel/drv/mega_sas	     32-bit ELF kernel module. (x86)

       /kernel/drv/amd64/mega_sas    64-bit kernel   module. (x86)

       /kernel/drv/mega_sas.conf     Driver configuration file (contains no user-configurable options).

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Architecture		     |x86-based systems 	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWmegasas		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface stability	     |Uncommitted		   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       prtconf(1M), attributes(5), sata(7D), scsi_hba_attach_setup(9F), scsi_sync_pkt(9F), scsi_transport(9F), scsi_inquiry(9S),  scsi_device(9S),
       scsi_pkt(9S)

       Small Computer System Interface-2 (SCSI-2)

SunOS 5.11							    14 Aug 2008 						      mega_sas(7D)