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

[Marc Villemade]

On Dec 11, 2010, at 5:34 PM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Joe Landman
> <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
>> On 12/11/2010 11:17 AM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:

>> [..]
>> 
>> --
> 
> 
> True, I fully agree with you on that point. I myself don't like vendor
> lock-ins. But, I do like the simplicity that off-the-shelf NAS devices
> offer, as apposed to a DIY one. And they often offer more tools than a
> normal Linux box with iSCSI as well.
> 

hi all,

[Disclaimer: I work for Scality]

Rudi, first and foremost, i think you have to pinpoint the main characteristic you want to improve on your system. It sounds like it is scalablity. Beyond NAS, there is an array (no pun intended) of choices for you to consider (scale-out NAS, SANs, clustered file system, dispersed storage ...).
But to figure out the best system for you, one needs to take a hard look at the kind of data you're storing and at the access patterns and requirements for those. 

For large systems (meaning > 100 TB and/or lots of files (of whichever size)), getting rid of the filesystem layer is sometimes very efficient. Hence, one should think about Object Storage as a solution. They bring high-reliability and durability (through self-replication, self-healing) with cost-efficiency using commodity hardware. It is the technology used by lots of public cloud vendors to offer their service for cheap and still be profitable. Those guys inherently need to be able to scale almost infinitely (look at Amazon or Rackspace).

If you are dealing with unstructured data as opposed to a relational database for example; if there are millions and millions of objects that you need to access quickly, object storage might be for you.

Rudi, what do you actually store ? for what kind of service is the storage layer used ? Are you storing emails/backups or hosting your employees' file sharing service ? Basically, if  you're storing any kind of data which size you know is likely to grow massively and you want to be able to:
	1 - allow it 
	2 - afford it 
	3 - operate it at the lowest possible cost
, then i would strongly suggest you look into object storage technology (there are a couple of opensource options as well as vendor solutions).

At scality, we have developed such an object store which scales smoothly up to petabytes with off-the shelf servers logically brought together in a ring.
While other solutions' performance usually degrade with time, our performance is similar to a high-end SAN from the start and stays roughly the same as we scale up to petabytes.

We gracefully scale in capacity and performance by just adding nodes to the system (without service interruption), so we're never limited by a box design (either in maximum nb of drives or by network capacity).

If you feel like you could use object storage to store your data, please have a look at our technology and get in touch - http://bit.ly/fY6eMm

Happy Holidays !

-Marc Villemade
http://linkd.in/heve30