Hi list, Due to possible budget cuts, I am looking at finding alternatives to the Netapp filers we currently have. Obviously, one of the key drivers is the performance required for our specific application. On https://www.fotoloog.org/fs.png you can see the load on our main filer. The key question I have is: looking at that graph, do you think it is worthwhile looking into Samba further as a possible replacement for the filer cifs functionality? I am still in the process of running netapps stats command to get insight in the raw disk i/o, which will possibly de the deciding factor. Will post as soon as I have that info. I was thinking RAID6 Areca cards (2 GB of NVRAM/BBU), quad Xeon servers with 16 GB of RAM and 'enterprise' sata disks (though possibly avoid raptors due to relatively low capacity). TIA, Koen Smeets -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by OpenProtect(http://www.openprotect.com), and is believed to be clean.
On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 04:43:10PM +0100, Koen Smeets wrote:> Hi list, > > Due to possible budget cuts, I am looking at finding alternatives to the > Netapp filers we currently have. Obviously, one of the key drivers is the > performance required for our specific application. > > On https://www.fotoloog.org/fs.png you can see the load on our main filer. > The key question I have is: looking at that graph, do you think it is > worthwhile looking into Samba further as a possible replacement for the > filer cifs functionality?This looks as if your filer ships 37MB/sec? Sounds doable with Samba. How many users? Volker -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/attachments/20070206/b4956372/attachment.bin
On 2/6/07, Koen Smeets <samba@fotoloog.org> wrote: <snip>> I was thinking RAID6 Areca cards (2 GB of NVRAM/BBU), quad Xeon servers with 16 > GB of RAM and 'enterprise' sata disks (though possibly avoid raptors due to > relatively low capacity).For those people reading this who suddenly think they need to run and and get some Enterprise SATA disks: Interesting term 'enterprise' sata disks. The implication is that they are in some way higher quality than standard sata disks. IIUC, this is not true. In fact for desktop or non-RAID use it is actually the reverse. Standard (non-enterprise) SATA disks place reliability as a primary concern. enterprise sata disks place consistent response time as a primary concern. This comes into play when there are media issues and crc errors are being experienced trying to read the data from disk. With the standard "desktop" firmware retry logic in the drive electronics is invoked to in effort to minimize data loss. This retry logic can take up to 7 or 8 seconds AIUI. With the enterprise firmware, there is no retry logic. As soon as a crc error occurs at the drive head level, the read is failed back to the Sata controller. The expectation is that the system has RAID redundancy built in and that the data can be retrieved quicker from the other disks than from the disk experiencing read issues. This also allows better tracking of drive tracking at the system level. As I said, seems like an interesting definition of enterprise to me. Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century