samba - Apr 2009 - Low cost additional storage on a Samba server

Hi,
 
At my client, I installed  Samba v3 
on a Linux box (Centos 4) with a NT style domain to act as a file server (about
50 Windows clients).
It's been running fine for a few years now.

It's about to run out of disk space.

I was looking for a low cost solution and came across the low-cost NAS that are
available now for the soho market.

The problem is that some support only smb file access for Linux clients which
for my case would be out of the question.

Some support NFS mounts from Linux host. 

I wanted to have some of your comments on presenting a NFS mounted filesystem on
my Samba server to Windows clients. Do you think, I would be looking for trouble
? I'm in a french speaking region so we're using accent. My experience
with NFS is a little bit old and I want to make sure I wouldn't loose the
french accent or spaces in filenames along the way.

Of course a direct-attached storage would be a sure thing but I was looking for
a lower cost solution.

Thanks in advance

JF Leblond

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Hello,
Some of our shares available via Samba come "via NFS" and so far we
had no problems at all, thus I can recommend you that solution (people
have no problems with ??? characters here). If you are unsure - run
little tests, play with different character supports and then roll the
real solution. You can even use your laptop for that.

On top of that please consider another option - you can just buy a
SATA controller and put inside two 1TB disks (if you wish to have a
nicely working RAID1 for example). A long lasting setup with
redundancy - and with current prices I would consider that affordable,
close to low-cost. The best plus is that you get 1TB of space and you
don't need a drive bay for n-disks in order to have similar capacity.
About TB disks - we have been careful in the beginning, because some
time ago TB disks "were a bit too new" to be used in production
(slight paranoids here). But right now I'm about to install Linux on a
new server with 4x1TB drives.

Regards,
Michal

2009/4/28 Jean-Francois Leblond
<jfleblond68@hotmail.com>:
>
> Hi,
>
> At my client, I installed ?Samba v3
> on a Linux box (Centos 4) with a NT style domain to act as a file server
(about 50 Windows clients).
> It's been running fine for a few years now.
>
> It's about to run out of disk space.
>
> I was looking for a low cost solution and came across the low-cost NAS that
are available now for the soho market.
>
> The problem is that some support only smb file access for Linux clients
which for my case would be out of the question.
>
> Some support NFS mounts from Linux host.
>
> I wanted to have some of your comments on presenting a NFS mounted
filesystem on my Samba server to Windows clients. Do you think, I would be
looking for trouble ? I'm in a french speaking region so we're using
accent. My experience with NFS is a little bit old and I want to make sure I
wouldn't loose the french accent or spaces in filenames along the way.
>
> Of course a direct-attached storage would be a sure thing but I was looking
for a lower cost solution.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> JF Leblond
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> R?inventez comment vous restez en contact avec le nouveau Windows Live
Messenger.
> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9650737--
> To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
> instructions: ?https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
>

Easiest way is to implement software RAID on your current server.
- add 2 (or more) new drives partitioned identically to your current 
drive (unless you want to replace your existing drive)
  - partition type is fd (RAID)
- create RAID 5 arrays using the new drives & partitions (except for 
/boot which should be on a RAID 1 array)
  - common setup is (but use whatever partition setup you currently have):
     - /boot --> RAID 1
    - / --> 20G RAID 5
    - /home --> rest of space
  - tell mdadm that 1 drive is missing from each array
- copy the files from each partition on your current drive to the RAID 
partitions on the new array
- update grub to use the new RAID arrays
- reboot into new array
- if it works, add your original drive (or its replacement) into the 
RAID array(s)

Needless to say, back up everything before starting. Creating a RAID 
array is safe but mistakes happen and hardware fails.

Benefit of RAID over NAS is
- don't need to change client setups
- can be expanded by adding new drives into array
- speed on reads
- protection against hard drive failure

Google Linux RAID setup for detailed howtos.



Jean-Francois Leblond wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> At my client, I installed  Samba v3 
> on a Linux box (Centos 4) with a NT style domain to act as a file server
(about 50 Windows clients).
> It's been running fine for a few years now.
>
> It's about to run out of disk space.
>
> I was looking for a low cost solution and came across the low-cost NAS that
are available now for the soho market.
>
> The problem is that some support only smb file access for Linux clients
which for my case would be out of the question.
>
> Some support NFS mounts from Linux host. 
>
> I wanted to have some of your comments on presenting a NFS mounted
filesystem on my Samba server to Windows clients. Do you think, I would be
looking for trouble ? I'm in a french speaking region so we're using
accent. My experience with NFS is a little bit old and I want to make sure I
wouldn't loose the french accent or spaces in filenames along the way.
>
> Of course a direct-attached storage would be a sure thing but I was looking
for a lower cost solution.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> JF Leblond
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> R?inventez comment vous restez en contact avec le nouveau Windows Live
Messenger.
> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9650737-- 
> To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
> instructions:  https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba
>
>

Hello John,
Thanks for answer. I did not expect that you will mention a board that
I have in my home computer :)

Regards,
Michal

2009/4/28 John Drescher <drescherjm@gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Michal Dobroczynski
> <michal.dobroczynski@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I can only confirm - yes - _use_ linux soft raid... do not believe all
>> these "smart RAID5 hw cards" :)
>>
>> Regarding the machines "bought in 2008" - can you please tell
me if
>> you have a separate controller (I am interested in brand/model) for
>> the drives or you are using onboard chip?
>>
> I am using ASUS M2N (AMD systems) and ASUS P5Q Pro (Intel systems)
> desktop boards with the onboard 6 to 8 SATA ports. To achieve good
> write performance I keep the default 64K chunks and tune the stripe
> cache size
>
> echo 2048 > /sys/block/md1/md/stripe_cache_size
> echo 2048 > /sys/block/md3/md/stripe_cache_size
>
> John
>