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

aac

AAC(4)							   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						    AAC(4)

NAME

     aac -- Adaptec AdvancedRAID Controller driver

SYNOPSIS

     aac* at pci? dev ? function ?
     ld* at aac? unit ?

DESCRIPTION

     The aac driver provides support for the Adaptec AAC family of SCSI and SATA RAID controllers.  These controllers support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10,
     and volume sets.  They have four channels in the add-in version or 1-2 channels in the motherboard integrated version, and are most often
     found rebadged by Dell, Hewlett-Packard or IBM.  Supported controllers include:

     o	 Adaptec AAC-364
     o	 Adaptec SCSI RAID 2120S
     o	 Adaptec SCSI RAID 2200S
     o	 Adaptec SATA RAID 2410SA
     o	 Adaptec SATA RAID 3405
     o	 Adaptec SCSI RAID 5400S
     o	 Dell PERC 2/Si
     o	 Dell PERC 2/QC
     o	 Dell PERC 3/Di
     o	 Dell PERC 3/Si
     o	 Dell PERC 320/DC
     o	 Dell CERC SATA RAID 1.5/6ch
     o	 HP NetRAID 4M
     o	 HP ML110 G2 (Adaptec SATA RAID 2610SA)
     o	 IBM ServeRAID 8k

     Access to RAID containers is available via the ld device driver.  Individual drives cannot be accessed unless they are part of a container or
     volume set, and non-fixed disks cannot be accessed.  Containers can be configured by using the on-board BIOS utility of the card.

DIAGNOSTICS

     The adapter can send status and alert messages asynchronously to the driver.  These messages are printed on the system console.

SEE ALSO

     intro(4), ld(4)

HISTORY

     The aac driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.6, and was based on the FreeBSD driver of the same name.

BUGS

     This driver is not compatible with controllers that have version 1.x firmware.  The firmware version is the same as the kernel version
     printed in the BIOS POST and driver attach messages.

BSD
								 February 19, 2011							       BSD