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 NETBSD

mvsata

MVSATA(4)						   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						 MVSATA(4)

NAME

     mvsata -- Marvell Hercules-I and Hercules-II SATA controllers driver

SYNOPSIS

     mvsata* at pci? dev ? function ?

DESCRIPTION

     The mvsata driver supports the Marvell Hercules-I and Hercules-II family of SATA controllers, interfacing the hardware with the ata(4) and
     atapi(4) subsystems.

     The following controllers are supported by the mvsata driver:

	   Adaptec RAID 1420SA
	   Adaptec RAID 1430SA
	   Marvell 88SX50xx Hercules-I
	   Marvell 88SX60xx Hercules-II
	   Marvell 88SX70xx Hercules-II
	   Triones Technologies RocketRAID 2310 RAID card

     The 88SX60xx and later support Native Command Queuing.  The 88SX70xx also supports ATAPI.

SEE ALSO

     ata(4), atapi(4), pci(4), wd(4)

HISTORY

     The mvsata driver first appeared in NetBSD 6.0.

AUTHORS

     The mvsata driver was written by KIYOHARA Takashi <kiyohara@kk.iij4u.or.jp>.

BUGS

     SATA Native Command Queuing is not yet supported.
     Device hot swapping is not yet supported.
     ATAPI is not yet tested.
     Marvell's Software RAID is not yet supported by the
	     ataraid(4) driver.  raid(4) can be used instead.

BSD
								   July 19, 2009							       BSD