Arcady Genkin put forth on 7/12/2010 10:49 PM: <very interesting and thorough background snipped for brevity>
> After dealing with all the idiosyncrasies of iSCSI and software RAID > under Linux I am a bit skeptical whether what we are building is going > to actually be better than a black-box fiber-attached RAID solution, > but it surely is cheaper and more expandable. I share your skepticism. Cheaper in initial acquisition cost, yes, but maybe not long term reliability and serviceability. Have you performed manual catastrophic iSCSI target node failure tests yet, monitored the node/disk/array reconstruction process to verify it all works as expected without user interruption? This is always the main concern with homegrown storage systems of this nature, and where "black box" solutions typically prove themselves more cost effective (at least in user good will $$) than home brew solutions. I myself am a fan of Nexsan storage arrays. They offer some of the least expensive and most feature rich and performant FC and iSCSI arrays on the market. Given what you've built, it would appear the SATABeast would fit your needs. 42 SATA drives in a 4U chassis, dual controllers with 4 x 4Gb FC ports and 4 x 1GbE iSCSI ports, 600MB/s sustained per controller, 1.2GB/s with both controllers, up to 4GB read/write battery backed cache per controller, web management/snmp/email alerts via mngt 10/100 ethernet port, etc, etc. The web management interface is particularly nice making it almost too easy to configure and manage arrays and LUN assignments. http://www.nexsan.com/satabeast.php One of these will run somewhere between $20-40k depending on disk qty/size/rpm and whether you want/need both controllers. They also offer an SAS version with 15krpm drives at higher cost. I've installed a couple of the single controller SATABeast models and the discontinued SATABlade model. They've performed flawlessly, no drive failures to date. Last I checked Nexsan still uses only Hitachi (formerly IBM) UltraStar drives. Good product/solution all around. If you end up in the market for a "black box" storage solution after all, I'd recommend you start your search with Nexsan. I'm not selling here, just a very happy customer. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c3ce8e8.1010...@hardwarefreak.com
