[Gluster-users] What NAS device(s) do you use? And why?

[Ed W]

On 11/12/2010 16:17, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> If you use any NAS (or a SAN) devices, what do you use? And I'm
> referring more to larger scale network storage than your home PC or
> home theater system.
>
> We've had very good experiences with our NetGear ReadyNAS devices but
> I'm in the market for something new. The NetGear's aren't the cheapest
> ones around but they do what it says on the box. My only real gripe
> with them is the lack of decent scalability.
>
> TheCus devices seems to be rather powerful as well, and you can stack
> upto 5 units together. But that's where the line stops.

You said no HTPC systems and then listed a couple?

I would have thought at the 100TB level you would want to have the 
experience to manage the machine in house anyway?  You want to be 100% 
comfortable that when that machine goes down you can rescue it...

So I would suggest a Norco or Supermicro case - these go up to 30-36 
drives per physical box.  Then choose your favourite distro and get 
super comfortable with the ins and outs of LVM, linux raid and iscsi.  
Break it, fix it, break it, ....

There is a growing amount of support for RAID6 as being far more 
"reliable" than RAID10 for a given set of parameters (and given 
definition of "reliable").  RAID10 is capable of far more IOPs though, 
so pick your poison...  I definitely buy the double parity argument 
though, so try and gain it somehow...  (The issue in practice seems to 
be that the first drive feels like "protection", but once it's failed 
it's ever so easy to have some kind of tiny error during recovery, eg 
unscrubbed array, unplug wrong drive, gremlin, second drive failure, etc)

I think you can buy a well supported Supermicro box with support from a 
well supported enterprise distro and still spend less than a mid-spec 
NAS at the level you are aiming at?  However, I would 100% concede that 
above the level of NAS boxes using off the shelf linux software there is 
a potentially large performance gap, eg a NetApp box should blow away 
your linux box (caveat - don't own a netapp box...)

Remember also that at this kind of storage level you need to be really 
sure what your goals are.  It's not so hard to get 100TB in a single 
chassis, but getting it "reliable" and "fast" (choose your own 
definition) is a tradeoff and much harder....

Good luck - I love hearing about these larger projects, please send some 
feedback on your choices?

Ed W