[Gluster-users] Please advise for our file server cluster

[Gao]

Hi,

We are a small business and now we are planning to build a new file 
server system. I did some research and I decide to use GlusterFS as the 
cluster system to build a 2-node system. Our goals are trying to 
minimize the downtime and to avoid single point of failure. Meanwhile, I 
need keep an eye on the budget.

In our office we have 20+ computers running Ubuntu. Few(6) machines use 
Windows 8. We use a SAMBA server to take care file sharing.

I did some research and here are some main components I selected for the 
system:
M/B: Asus P9D-E/4L (It has 6 SATA ports so I can use softRAID5 for data 
storage. 4 NIC ports so I can do link aggregation)
CPU: XEON E3-1220v3 3.1GHz (is this over kill? the MB also support i3 
though.)
Memory: 4x8GB ECC DDR3
SSD: 120 GB for OS
Hard Drive: 4 (or 5) 3TB 7200RPM drive to form soft RAID5
10GBe card: Intel X540-T1

About the hardware I am not confident. One thing is the 10GBe card. Is 
it sufficient? I chose this because it's less expensive. But I don't 
want it drag the system down once I build them. Also, if I only need 2 
nodes, can I just use CAT6 cable to link them together? or I have to use 
a 10GBe switch?

Could someone give me some advice?

Thanks.

Gao




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