I'm looking for some perspectives on the storage options available
today, and on the horizon...
Specifically, I'm thinking about something that would be a little
handier and more future proof for my servers I run. Specifically, I run
VMWare Server on Linux and several virtual machines all on the same
hardware.
There are several different variables and technologies at this point:
- direct attach w. software or hardware RAID
- file systems such as ZFS and BTRFS and the cool stuff you can do with
them
- NAS
- external RAID arrays
- iSCSI
- getting higher quality disks such as SCSI and solid state drives
In a perfect world, here is what I'd like:
- A storage device not tethered to my servers so that I can add more
storage as needed without planning for downtime and running dd, and
upgrade server hardware without having to reinvest in storage.
- Fast I/O suitable for running VMs. There are tricks that can be
employed which will help one get by with SATA, but you still have to be
careful not to do heavy disk operations on the host as to render the
guests unresponsive. This is a nuisance, and of course makes
hypothetically backing up complete VM disk images difficult.
- Disk redundancy, i.e. some sort of RAID configuration.
- Some sort of solution somewhere between Cletus the Slackjaw Yokel's
Windows XP box and high level enterprise stuff. I like the idea of
spreading out the I/O demand across several cheap disks, adding more
disk as needed, replacing failed disks as necessary. I don't need crazy
fast I/O, I just need something a little more than a single SATA disk.
So, enterprise level technology is not what I'm after here, just
convenience and decent performance.
- Something that will be relatively future proof and not cost me a
fortune :)
- I'm using nearly 250 gig right now so my capacity needs are not
tremendous, but it would cost me a lot more than what I'm paying now to
run within a VPS provider such as Linode or Slicehost, and I'd rather
not get into the position where my costs grow significantly just to add
a modest amount of disk space. My storage needs don't warrant an
expensive SAN such as the ones that are no doubt in use by these
providers, one of my VMs is running Windows, and I like the control I
have now and I like working with my server provider. So, I'm not really
keen on moving my eight servers to VMs provided by one of these companies
- A way to backup all of this data (snapshots), preferably via the same
overall design so that I have something I can test with and perhaps even
fail over to in the event of an emergency. I know that offsite
redundancy is the golden egg for many companies, but hey, this is a
perfect world type wishlist! :) I use Amazon S3 for an offsite backup in
addition to my current backup to backup my most important data, but to
keep my costs to a minimum I'd prefer to just stay with rsync to
multiple cheap disks.
I'm interested in learning more about iSCSI, and am fascinated with
BTRFS and ZFS. Do any of you have any experience with any of this, have
any general recommendations, thoughts, predictions, anything? I don't
need to buy anything tomorrow, I'm just thinking that it would be nice
to think ahead a little.
It seems like I'm kind of stuck in between not needing to invest heavily
in storage like a big company would, yet I'm pushing the limits of
run-of-the-mill consumer grade direct attach SATA type stuff - the kind
of solution that would be great for using with Time Machine to store
pictures of your kids.
--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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