that I'd have to give up LVM. Since I plan to run several servers that
would share this same storage it would be nice to put each of these disk
images in their own growable partitions, or at least have this available
as an option.
Joe Auty wrote:
> Lord Drachenblut wrote:
>> On Sunday 27 September 2009 3:37:10 am Joe Auty wrote:
>>> Hey Guys,
>>>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> You might try looking into using freenas. it can do alot of the things
>> you
>> are looking for and has support for zfs and iscsi at this point.
>>
>
> Thanks for the idea!
>
> I've looked at FreeNAS in the past, and it is an interesting option and
> seemingly useful to me since I use FreeBSD a lot, but what about the
> hardware end of things? What would host the disks that FreeNAS would
> manage and make available?
>
>
>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>
>
--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org
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