[ale] Giant storage system suggestions

[Lightner, Jeff]

If you're looking at stuff on that scale is performance not an issue?   There are disk arrays that can go over fibre and if it were me I'd probably be looking  at those especially if performance was a concern.

RAID5 is begging for trouble - losing 2 disks in a RAID5 means the whole RAID set is kaput.  I'd recommend at least RAID6 and even better (for performance) RAID10.





-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Alex Carver
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:04 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: [ale] Giant storage system suggestions

I'm trying to design a storage system for some of my data in a way that will be useful to duplicate the design for a project at work.

Digging around online it seems that a common suggestion has been a good motherboard, a SATA/SAS card, a SATA/SAS expander, and then a huge chassis to support all of the SATA drives.

It looks like one of the recommended SATA/SAS cards is an LSI 9200 series card connected to an Intel RES2SV240 expander.

What I'm trying to achieve is continually expandable storage space.  As more storage is required, I just keep slipping drives into the system.
If I max out a case, I just add a SATA/SAS card, use external SATA/SAS cables (do those exist to go from SFF-8087 to SFF-8088?), another expander and then stretch into a new case.

It's obviously going to run linux or I wouldn't be asking here. :)  The entire storage system will probably start somewhere around 10-16 TB and grow from there.  The first question would be suggestions for an optimal
configuration of the disks.   For example, should the drives be grouped
into say RAID-5 arrays with four devices per array and then logically combine them in software into a single storage volume?  If so, what file system will support something that could potentially reach beyond 100 TB (not that I'd reach 100 TB anytime soon but it can happen)?

Thanks,
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