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Dual raid setup?

M

mattm

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2006
Messages
173
Just a thought, not sure If I could even do this, but here's what I'm wondering.

I'de like to setup a new *nix fileserver with the host OS installed on a RAID 1 array and then mount /home on a RAID 5 array. Basically keeping the OS envirmoent seperate from the raw data that is stored on the raid 5 array.

Would I need 2 serperate raid controllers? or could I try onboard RAID 1 and then just a Raid 5 card for the larger array? Thoughts?
 
Should work just fine. As for if you need addionall controllers will depend on the RAID controllers in question. But most should allow multiple arrays to be created.

With Linux, you could use Software RAID for the RAID 5 volume quite easily, so if you have enough SATA connectors on the MB you might not need to purchase any controllers at all.
 
Sure, it'll work fine. Any controller should support multiple arrays, and LSR is stable and fast if it doesn't.

 
Sure. My brother's got a 2.1TB array on LSR, it works fine. I wouldn't try to boot off a 2tb+ array, but putting data on it works just fine.

 
mattm said:
Would you say LSR is good enough for up to 1TB?
Click to expand...

I am fairly sure that the only limit is the size limit of the filesystem you decide to use. I know of people creating LSR arrays in the multi TB range.
 
Now let's go one step further. Let's say it's in a multi-user environment. Say up 10 people? How does LSR handle that?
 
mattm said:
Now let's go one step further. Let's say it's in a multi-user environment. Say up 10 people? How does LSR handle that?
Click to expand...

10 people doing what? All 10 writing to it constantly with a video stream?

Unless you are on a gigabit network that is trunked to the server, your network is likely to be your bottleneck anyways.
 
He does a lot of seeding on torrents, at 10 mbits. It handles that, plus playing music, plus playing DVD iso images over (a different) network. I haven't tested anything more strenuous - due to an issue with the controllers we're using on it, STR is only like 22MB/s. It's much higher with different controllers we've tried, but we need the port density.

Even despite the crappy STR, it can manage to deliver ~100 mbit continuously, pretty much 24/7. We don't have room for a gigabit card in the machine, or it'd have one ;)

 
unhappy_mage said:
Even despite the crappy STR, it can manage to deliver ~100 mbit continuously, pretty much 24/7.
Click to expand...

100mbit ethernet is under 13MB/s.
 
Yes, I know. But a little seeking can quickly destroy STR; I'm mentioning that despite all the torrenting (usually, a single peer is only getting a few tens of KB/s, so there are a hundred or so streams being read off disk!) you still get a decent aggregate rate off the box.

 
it would be mainly file sharing large raw images (50MB+). I was actually thinking of putting it on a gige lan and mounting it via ATA over Ethernet off of a intranet HTTP server.

[Gigabit LAN]
.........|
.........|---------- [intranet http / samba]
.........|...............................|______ [ATAoE NAS]
.........|
.___|__
|..............|
[pc]......[pc]
 
Someone who has a similar setup would be able to answer this better, but if the file server is not doing much that is processor intesive, my understanding is that the current LSR only takes ~5% CPU max and gets performance similar to uncached dedicated RAID cards.
 
ATAoE is probably not the best solution; something like SMB or CIFS would probably have very similar performance, and less complexity. You could use it as a seperate machine, rather than chain it off an existing one, especially if performance is an issue.

And iScsi is easier to deal with, if you really want a block device exported ;)

 
I guess I need to research to make sure I can run LSR and use the mount as ATAoE.

Mage, reason for ATAoE is cost, obviously you can't beat it. If I can mount a TB via ATAoE I can use the space to run multiple applications, like an intranet http, a samba file share, and any other app I can serve up over the network.
 
Lazn_Work said:
Someone who has a similar setup would be able to answer this better, but if the file server is not doing much that is processor intesive, my understanding is that the current LSR only takes ~5% CPU max and gets performance similar to uncached dedicated RAID cards.
Click to expand...

Bechmarks here.

SMB mount has been removed from recent kernels (if your mounting to linux) and replaced with CIFS. CIFS is by far the easiest to setup, NFS is noticably faster. 8 SATA ports on a PCI-X card with wide driver support is an excellent value for ~$100.
 
The reason I recommended iScsi is it's built into Linux, and the Windows half is free. MS provides a download for an iScsi initiator somewhere on their website. If you've got an ATAoE stack somewhere, go for it, but the iScsi is free and well-tested.

I'd still recommend SMB/CIFS for almost anything. If you create several shares, like \\server\http, \\server\files, and \\server\otherapps, they can use a native Linux filesystem, use a more used protocol, and be shared between multiple servers. With ATAoE or iScsi, you can't use the same block device for multiple app servers. CIFS would let you use the same (read-only, preferrably) storage for a cluster of http servers, as an example. NTFS, IIRC, writes something to the disk when it's mounted to keep other things from mounting it. CIFS deals with mounting the same share multiple times.

 
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