On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 08:04:54AM -0800, Bryan J. Smith wrote: > > > NAS offers safe concurent access (generally, there might be > > some NAS devices outthere that do not). NAS device will > > manage file system internally, and export it over NFS or > > SMB protocols to the clients. > > Such NAS' are a combined host+storage aka "filer." They have > many advantages over SAN -- especially in their fail-over > and/or load-balancing capabilities. ... > Oh, it all depends on the design of the NAS. NetApp does a > pretty damn fine job with their designs (long story). > But there's many other benefits. But that is a larger > discussion. Hi Bryan, Please tell. I have to replace our old Sun Enterprise fileserver (solaris8), which does NFS and Samba (homedirectories, projects file space). It will be x86 hardware, but I'm looking for the best filesystem for the job (let's say one terabyte). It has to have quota and ACL support. I'm doing CentOS on servers these days, but I presume ext3 is not the best choice in this case. Previous postings of yours suggest XFS is the way to go. However, it seems hard to find an enterprise class linux distro with XFS incorporated? And how does a FreeBSD solution compare to linux/ext3 or linux/xfs? What are the considerations in case of a NAS filer instead of a raid-box connected to hostmachine? Regards, -- Henk van Lingen, Systems & Network Administrator (o- -+ Dept. of Computer Science, Utrecht University. /\ | phone: +31-30-2535278 v_/_ http://henk.vanlingen.net/ http://www.tuxtown.net/netiquette/
On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 11:00 +0100, Henk van Lingen wrote:> Hi Bryan, > Please tell. I have to replace our old Sun Enterprise fileserver > (solaris8), which does NFS and Samba (homedirectories, projects file > space). It will be x86 hardware, but I'm looking for the best filesystem > for the job (let's say one terabyte). It has to have quota and ACL support.NetApp is very costly per $ versus traditional file storage. But the Data OnTap OS with WAFL filesystem was basically designed by 2 of Sun's original NFS designers. WAFL works very different than most traditional UNIX server filesystems. The WAFL filesystem has a couple of different modes for network filesystem protocol access. One catered towards NFS, another catered towards SMB -- but you can access from both simultaneously, there are just considerations. Solaris/x86-64 has a good bang-for-the-buck, and UFS supports quotas as well as Samba 3 ACLs. I haven't used their new filesystem with Samba though (anyone, anyone?).> I'm doing CentOS on servers these days, but I presume ext3 is not the > best choice in this case. Previous postings of yours suggest XFS is the > way to go. However, it seems hard to find an enterprise class linux > distro with XFS incorporated?Unfortunately, I'm finding it difficult to recommend XFS on Linux at this point. Not until Red Hat gets serious about it.> And how does a FreeBSD solution compare to linux/ext3 or linux/xfs?XFS is being ported to FreeBSD, as some of the licensing issues have been worked out. But I wouldn't trust it anywhere close to even Linux at this point. I'm a little outta date on FreeBSD and Samba, the last time I used Samba on FreeBSD was version 2.2 several years ago (yes, yes, I know, quite hypocritical for the guy who wrote the BSD appendix in "Samba Unleashed" -- but that was 5 years ago).> What are the considerations in case of a NAS filer instead of a raid-box > connected to hostmachine?Nothing really. I mean, you traditionally don't have full shell/filesystem access in a NetApp filer, and you need a "sister admin system" (one system with special mounts) to administer some "/etc" files, but otherwise, they are pretty nice. Especially for fail-over, but it'll cost you. -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman
Hi Henk: xfs is in the Centosplus repository. On the "enterprise class" if you mean "Redhat derived" then you have a point. However, SuSE and most of the other major distributions have native xfs support (and have had it for years). Redhat is rather alone in this regard, and this may be due to all their investment in ext3. Joe Henk van Lingen wrote:> Hi Bryan, > > Please tell. I have to replace our old Sun Enterprise fileserver > (solaris8), which does NFS and Samba (homedirectories, projects file > space). It will be x86 hardware, but I'm looking for the best filesystem > for the job (let's say one terabyte). It has to have quota and ACL support. > > I'm doing CentOS on servers these days, but I presume ext3 is not the > best choice in this case. Previous postings of yours suggest XFS is the > way to go. However, it seems hard to find an enterprise class linux > distro with XFS incorporated? And how does a FreeBSD solution compare > to linux/ext3 or linux/xfs? > > What are the considerations in case of a NAS filer instead of a raid-box > connected to hostmachine? > > Regards, >-- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman at scalableinformatics.com web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 786 8423 fax : +1 734 786 8452 cell : +1 734 612 4615