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 DEBIAN

arcmsr

ARCMSR(4)						   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						 ARCMSR(4)

NAME

     arcmsr -- Areca SATA II RAID Controller driver

SYNOPSIS

     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

	   device pci
	   device scbus
	   device da
	   device arcmsr

     Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

	   arcmsr_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

     The arcmsr driver provides support for the Areca ARC-11xx and ARC-12xx series of SATA II RAID controllers.  These controllers feature RAID-0,
     1, 3, 5, 6, and 10 and JBOD acceleration for up to 16 SATA drives.  Raid level and stripe level migration, online capacity expansion, hot
     insertion/removal, automatic failover and rebuild, and SMART are also supported.  Access to the arrays is provided via the SCSI CAM /dev/da?
     device nodes.  A management interface is also present via the /dev/arcmsr? device node.  Management tools for i386 and amd64 are available
     from Areca.

HARDWARE

     The arcmsr driver supports the following cards:

     o	 ARC-1110
     o	 ARC-1120
     o	 ARC-1130
     o	 ARC-1160
     o	 ARC-1170
     o	 ARC-1180
     o	 ARC-1110ML
     o	 ARC-1120ML
     o	 ARC-1130ML
     o	 ARC-1160ML
     o	 ARC-1210
     o	 ARC-1220
     o	 ARC-1230
     o	 ARC-1260
     o	 ARC-1280
     o	 ARC-1210ML
     o	 ARC-1220ML
     o	 ARC-1231ML
     o	 ARC-1261ML
     o	 ARC-1280ML

FILES

     /dev/da?	   Array block device
     /dev/arcmsr?  Management interface

SEE ALSO

     da(4), scbus(4)

HISTORY

     The arcmsr driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.4.

AUTHORS

     The driver was written by Erich Chen <erich@areca.com.tw>.

BUGS

     The driver has been tested on i386 and amd64.  It likely requires additional work to function on big-endian architectures.

BSD
								  March 28, 2008							       BSD