Re: 8TB of external storage?

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:44 PM, Timothy J. Wielgos <[email protected]>wrote:

> Disclaimer:  I'm a storage admin, so I think everything can be solved with
> enough disks.  Take my advice with a grain of salt.
>
> How much are you willing to spend?
>

2k is not out of the question.


> This seems like a whole lotta hoops to jump through to get the same result
> that a decent NetApp NAS head would get you.  Disks will cost you more,
> though.
>
>
How would I get 8*80g of data moved from 8 laptops to it, and how long would
it take?


> Just a quick check of Ebay shows some pretty good deals; used SAN equipment
> is all over the place.  Here's one:
>
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/Netapp-C2300-and-FAS960-DS14MK2-w-14-147GB-FC-HD-/260686751855?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb224286f
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Carl Karsten <[email protected]>
> *To:* Timothy J. Wielgos <[email protected]>
> *Cc:* Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion <
> [email protected]>
> *Sent:* Thu, November 4, 2010 4:39:23 PM
>
> *Subject:* Re: [LUNI] 8TB of external storage?
>
> current workflow:
> 1, 8 laptops with 320g drives hooked to 8 dv cameras, streaming 13g/h for 6
> hours.
> 2. end of day, copy data to file server,
> 3. from file server copy to 1 of 5 1.5T external drive, put that drive away
> (backup)
> 4. wipe laptops to make room for next days files.
> 5. use laptops to review/encode data on server.
> repeat for 5 days, so more than 320g gets collected on each drive.
>
>
>
> new plan:
> upgrade laptops to 640g - enough that we don't need to do step 4 (wipe)
>
> add an external drive to each laptop/camera set, stream to both internal
> and external.
>
> hook laptops to file server so that encoded files get collected on file
> server, but local laptops drives are the primary source of the raw video
> files.  external drives are the backups.
>
> externals will be hooked to the server and a 3rd copy made,  but that step
> can run in parallel low priority to step 5 (review/encode) because nothing
> relies on it, and we have a backup already.  the 3rd copy is really so when
> things get behind schedule (they always do) it is easier to work with all
> the files in one place.   and having the primary/backup copies moving around
> the event has some level of risk.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Timothy J. Wielgos <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Holy cow. If you need that kind of speed, you might consider Fibre Channel
>> and/or nfs or iscsi over 10gigE.
>>
>> You can also get a bunch of NICs, preferrably TOE cards, and bond them for
>> speed if you're set on a DIY or budget implementation.
>>
>> We have not had a lot of good results from SATA disks. They tend to be too
>> slow and unreliable for our purposes. We only use them for archival purposes
>> now - stuff that doesn't require speed.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android
>>
>>  ------------------------------
>> * From: * Carl Karsten <[email protected]>;
>> * To: * Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion
>> <[email protected]>;
>> * Subject: * Re: [LUNI] 8TB of external storage?
>> * Sent: * Thu, Nov 4, 2010 3:32:40 AM
>>
>>   On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Richard Lynch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > I have no idea what to recommend, but I have spotted a lack of speed
>> > requirements here...
>> >
>> > I suspect that you should have a minimum speed target for the
>> > read/write tasks...
>> >
>> > But I dunno what I'm talking about, as I've never needed anything like
>> > 8TB...
>>
>> good point about speed.  my PyCon video project results in moving 600G
>> onto a server each evening, and then doing more work once the data is
>> there.  over gig E it takes a few hours, and that basically cuts into
>> sleep.  I am looking at changing things around so that I don't have
>> that bottleneck
>>
>> how does one backup 8T?
>>
>> Or is the point of the box to be a collection of backups?
>>
>> Or do you rely on raid to deal with disk fail and not worry about the
>> other risks.
>>
>> huh - I wonder how google looks at this problem.
>>
>> >
>> > I accidentally built a 1TB audio server one time, with JBOD, but that
>> > was like, an accident, really...
>> >
>> > I used a case and MOBO from a dumpstered tower and crammed a bunch of
>> > hard drives in it and df -h added up to 1TB. :-)
>> >
>> > It worked quite well over the course of the several years it was in
>> > service before the priorities of the client changed... It's in my
>> > basement at the moment.
>> >
>> > On Wed, November 3, 2010 4:19 pm, David Ehle wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello all,
>> >>
>> >> Long time lurker, wanted to see if anyone has any experience and
>> >> suggestions regarding medium-large storage solutions.
>> >>
>> >> I need to upgrade and consolidate our storage backups.
>> >>
>> >> I would like to start with 6-8TBs
>> >>
>> >> I want it rack mountable.
>> >>
>> >> I want to run RAID5 or RAID6, and be able to add more/larger drives to
>> >> the
>> >> array in the future to expand it.
>> >>
>> >> It must speak sweetly to linux.
>> >>
>> >> I've looked at NAS solutions like products by Drobo,QNAP,Thecus and
>> >> they
>> >> seem to be about the most cost effective... but now that linux
>> >> supports
>> >> expanding software RAID on the fly, I'm not really sure they offer
>> >> anything extra and add an extra layer of potential failure / lockin /
>> >> interface.
>> >>
>> >> Dell/IBM solutions just cost too much and are overengineered for the
>> >> task
>> >> at hand.
>> >>
>> >> Buying a new system with 8 hotswap sas/sata bays is an option, but
>> >> expensive. (compared to a NAS black box)
>> >>
>> >> Buying an external enclosure is cost competitive to Drobo/Qnap/Thecus
>> >> black box solutions, but I would want esata or SAS connectivity... and
>> >> while I've done eSATA I have not done much work with external SAS. I'm
>> >> not
>> >> sure if how the drives will be presented to the OS if enclosure is
>> >> connected via 1 cable.  iSCSI is also an option I guess but then
>> >> wouldn't
>> >> I need a "smart" box rather than JBOD backplane?  If going this route,
>> >> would I go with just some vendors "a esata/SAS card" or would I need
>> >> some
>> >> sort of hardware RAID card?
>> >>
>> >> Anyone else delt with a similar situation? Any insite or advice?
>> >>
>> >> I've thought about some of the Storage distributions like
>> >> Openfiler/OpenNas - but I don't really feel like learning BSD for this
>> >> project, and I think opensolaris based projects are going to die do to
>> >> lack of support now that Oracle has abandoned OpenSolaris (bye bye ZFS
>> >> :P)
>> >>
>> >> Any experience with Drobo/Qnap/Thecus?  Which is most linux friendly?
>> >> Which can you take the disks and attach them to something else if the
>> >> hardware dies? (Drobo is out because of this, Qnap uses "custom" ext3
>> >> version but is readable from bootable ISO, thecus I'm not sure about)
>> >>
>> >> Anywy thanks for listening to me think out loud... what's your input?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks!
>> >>
>> >> David.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion
>> >> http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > brain cancer update:
>> > http://richardlynch.blogspot.com/search/label/brain%20tumor
>> > Donate:
>> >
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>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion
>> > http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Carl K
>>
>> --
>> Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion
>> http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Carl K
>
> --
> Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion
> http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni
>
>


-- 
Carl K

-- 
Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion 
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