Sol
Storage is cool
Recently I've been setting up a linux box to act as a file server/router with the aim of getting the bulk of my storage out of my soon to be watercooled duel core opteron and into something a litte cheeper/safer to run 24x7 as well as increasing my options with security and internet control.
Currently I'm using a 4 drive sata fakeraid array with a promise controller in windows and I've been looking at better/safer solutions. I can get away with my current setup because the data on it is handy but not in any way critical and the expense of redundancy,backups or whatever would be more than it's worth but a better setup requiring no more hardware would be nice too.
I've looked aat just creating a linux software raid array and that looks like a good option but another solution looks like it could be even better.
OpenSolaris supports the use of the ZFS filesystem. From what I gather ZFS would allow me to declare a pool of block devices which contribute to a file system. Essentially this would be much the same as a raid 0 array but without the striping. Additionally I should be able to simply add block devices to the pool at a later time and the filesystem could just use them with no extra setup.
The advantages of this setup seem pretty high, admitedly I'd lose the performance advantage of raid0 but since I'm mostly streaming data onto the file system thrugh a 1.5Mbit ADSL connection or off to watch in realtime or burn to a DVD I doubt it will be a great issue. I would get some reliability from it since if one drive failed I'd just lose what was on that drive (and any files hanging over the edges I guess) and I can add any sized drives later without any problems.
So to finallly get arround to a question has anyone used OpenSolaris or ZFS? Are my conclusions totally crazy? And will other factors, like hardware compatability, be so much of a pain in the arse as to make the whole thing not worthwhile anyway.
Also does anyone know of some similar system I could use in Linux instead?
Currently I'm using a 4 drive sata fakeraid array with a promise controller in windows and I've been looking at better/safer solutions. I can get away with my current setup because the data on it is handy but not in any way critical and the expense of redundancy,backups or whatever would be more than it's worth but a better setup requiring no more hardware would be nice too.
I've looked aat just creating a linux software raid array and that looks like a good option but another solution looks like it could be even better.
OpenSolaris supports the use of the ZFS filesystem. From what I gather ZFS would allow me to declare a pool of block devices which contribute to a file system. Essentially this would be much the same as a raid 0 array but without the striping. Additionally I should be able to simply add block devices to the pool at a later time and the filesystem could just use them with no extra setup.
The advantages of this setup seem pretty high, admitedly I'd lose the performance advantage of raid0 but since I'm mostly streaming data onto the file system thrugh a 1.5Mbit ADSL connection or off to watch in realtime or burn to a DVD I doubt it will be a great issue. I would get some reliability from it since if one drive failed I'd just lose what was on that drive (and any files hanging over the edges I guess) and I can add any sized drives later without any problems.
So to finallly get arround to a question has anyone used OpenSolaris or ZFS? Are my conclusions totally crazy? And will other factors, like hardware compatability, be so much of a pain in the arse as to make the whole thing not worthwhile anyway.
Also does anyone know of some similar system I could use in Linux instead?
