Re: Best way to achieve large, expandable, cheap storage?

[Tyler <pml@dtbb.net>]

Christopher Smith wrote:

> Robin Bowes wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a business opportunity which would involve a large amount of 
>> storage, possibly growing to 10TB in the first year, possibly more. 
>> This would be to store media files - probably mainly .flac or .mp3 
>> files.
>
>
> Here's what I do (bear in mind this is for a home setup, so the data 
> volumes aren't as large and I'd expand in smaller amounts to you - but 
> the principle is the same).
>
> I use a combination of Linux's software RAID + LVM for a flexible, 
> expandable data store.  I buy disks in sets of four, with a four-port 
> disk controller and a 4-drive, cooled chassis of some sort (lately, 
> the Coolermaster 4-in-3 part).
>
> I RAID5 the drives together and glue multiple sets of 4 drives 
> together into a single usable chunk using LVM.
>
> Over the last ~5 years, this has allowed me to move from/to the 
> following disk configurations:
>
> 4x40GB -> 4x40GB + 4x120GB -> 4x40GB + 4x120GB + 4x250GB -> 4x120GB + 
> 4x250GB -> 4x250GB + 4x250GB.
>
> In the next couple of months I plan to add another 4x300GB "drive set" 
> to expand further.  I add drives about once a year.  I remove drives 
> either because I run out of physical room in the machine, or to re-use 
> them in other machines (eg: the 4x120GB drives are now scratch space 
> on my workstation, the 4x40GB drives went into machines I built for 
> relatives).  The case I have now is capable of holding about 20 
> drives, so I probably won't be removing any for a while (previous 
> cases were stretched to hold 8 drives).
>
> Apart from the actual hardware installations and removals, the various 
> reconfigurations have been quite smoothe and painless, with LVM 
> allowing easy migration of data to/from RAID devices, division of 
> space, etc. I've had 3 disk failures, none of which have resulted in 
> any data loss.  The "data store" has been moved across 3 very 
> different physical machines and 3 different Linux installations 
> (Redhat 9 -> RHEL3 -> FC4).
>
> I would suggest not trying to resize existing arrays at all, and 
> simply accept the "space wastage" as a cost of flexibility.  Storage 
> is cheap, and a few dozens or hundreds of GB lost to long-term cost 
> savings is well worth it IMHO.  The space I "lose" but not 
> reconfiguring my RAID arrays whenever I add more disks is more than 
> made up for by the money I've saving not buying everything at once, or 
> the additional space available at the same price point.
>
> I would, however, suggest getting a case with a large amount of 
> physical space in it so you don't have to remove drives to add bigger 
> ones.
>
> But, basically, just buy as much space as you need now and then buy 
> more as required - it's trivially easy to do, and you'll save money in 
> the long run.
>
> CS
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What case and power supply(s)are you using?  What raid cards are you 
using also?

Thanks,
Tyler.


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