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

arcmsr

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

NAME

     arcmsr -- Areca Technology Corporation SATA/SAS RAID controller

SYNOPSIS

     arcmsr* at pci? dev ? function ?

DESCRIPTION

     The arcmsr driver provides support for the PCI-X and PCI Express RAID controllers from Areca Technology Corporation:

	   -   ARC-1110 PCI-X 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1110ML PCI-X 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1120 PCI-X 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1120ML PCI-X 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1130 PCI-X 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1130ML PCI-X 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1160 PCI-X 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1160ML PCI-X 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1170 PCI-X 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1200 Rev A PCI Express 2 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1202 PCI Express 2 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1210 PCI Express 4 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1220 PCI Express 8 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1230 PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1230ML PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1231ML PCI Express 12 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1260 PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1260ML PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1261ML PCI Express 16 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1280 PCI Express 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1280ML PCI Express 24 Port SATA RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680 PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680LP PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680i PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1680x PCI Express 8 Port SAS RAID Controller
	   -   ARC-1681 PCI-X 8 Port SAS RAID Controller

     These controllers support RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, and JBOD using either SAS or SATA II drives.

     arcmsr supports management and monitoring of the controller through the bioctl(8) and envstat(8) commands.

     Please note, however, that to use some features that require special privileges, such as creating/removing hot-spares, pass-through disks or
     RAID volumes will require to have the password disabled in the firmware; otherwise a Permission denied error will be reported by bioctl(8).

     When a RAID 1 or 1+0 volume is created, either through the bioctl(8) command or controller's firmware, the volume won't be accessible until
     the initialization is done.  A way to get access to the sd(4) device that corresponds to that volume without rebooting, is to issue the fol-
     lowing command (once the initialization is finished):

     $ scsictl scsibus0 scan any any

     The arcmsr driver will also report to the kernel log buffer any error that might appear when handling firmware commands, such as used by the
     bioctl(8) command.

EVENTS

     The arcmsr driver is able to send events to powerd(8) if a volume or any drive connected to the volume is not online.  The state-changed
     event will be sent to the /etc/powerd/scripts/sensor_drive script when such condition happens.

SEE ALSO

     intro(4), pci(4), scsi(4), sd(4), bioctl(8), envstat(8), powerd(8), scsictl(8)

HISTORY

     The arcmsr driver first appeared in NetBSD 5.0.

AUTHORS

     The arcmsr driver was originally written for OpenBSD by David Gwynne.  It was ported to NetBSD and extended by Juan Romero Pardines.

BSD
								   March 3, 2008							       BSD