suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

[Mike]

I'm creating a larger backup server that uses bacula (this
software works well). The way I'm going about this I need
lots of space in the filesystem where temporary files are
stored. I have been looking at the Norco (link at the bottom),
but there seem to be some grumblings that the adapter card
does not play well with linux.

Has anyone used this device or have another suggestion? I'm
looking at something that will present lots of disk to the
linux box (fedore core 5, kernel 2.6.20) that I will put
under md/RAID and LVM. I want to have between 1.5TB and 3.0TB
of usable space after all the RAID'ing.

Mike

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133001

Re: suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

[Justin Piszcz]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Mike wrote:

> I'm creating a larger backup server that uses bacula (this
> software works well). The way I'm going about this I need
> lots of space in the filesystem where temporary files are
> stored. I have been looking at the Norco (link at the bottom),
> but there seem to be some grumblings that the adapter card
> does not play well with linux.
>
> Has anyone used this device or have another suggestion? I'm
> looking at something that will present lots of disk to the
> linux box (fedore core 5, kernel 2.6.20) that I will put
> under md/RAID and LVM. I want to have between 1.5TB and 3.0TB
> of usable space after all the RAID'ing.
>
> Mike
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133001
>
> -
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>

Get 3 Hitachi 1TB drives and use SW RAID5 on an Intel 965 motherboard OR 
use PCI-e cards that use the Silicon Image chipset.

04:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid 
II Controller (rev 01)

Justin.

Re: suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

[Mike]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706181255540.31683@p34.internal.lan>, Justin Piszcz wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Mike wrote:
> 
>> I'm creating a larger backup server that uses bacula (this
>> software works well). The way I'm going about this I need
>> lots of space in the filesystem where temporary files are
>> stored. I have been looking at the Norco (link at the bottom),
>> but there seem to be some grumblings that the adapter card
>> does not play well with linux.
>>
>> Has anyone used this device or have another suggestion? I'm
>> looking at something that will present lots of disk to the
>> linux box (fedore core 5, kernel 2.6.20) that I will put
>> under md/RAID and LVM. I want to have between 1.5TB and 3.0TB
>> of usable space after all the RAID'ing.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133001
> 
> Get 3 Hitachi 1TB drives and use SW RAID5 on an Intel 965 motherboard OR 
> use PCI-e cards that use the Silicon Image chipset.
> 
> 04:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid 
> II Controller (rev 01)
> 
> Justin.

Any idea if the Hitachi 1 TB drives will work in a Dell PowerEdge 800? I
have two 80GB drives in the box right now that I would like to replace
with four of the 1 TB drives.

Mike

Re: suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

[linux]

> Get 3 Hitachi 1TB drives and use SW RAID5 on an Intel 965 motherboard OR 
> use PCI-e cards that use the Silicon Image chipset.
> 
> 04:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid 
> II Controller (rev 01)

What he said.  After some thinking, I loaded up a machine with 3x
SiI3132 and figured I'll expand by port multiplier.  Port multipliers
are documented in the standard, not vendor-defined, and are currently
made only by, guess who, Silicon Image.  I haven't used any yet, but
apparently they're working, and you know that both the manufacturer and
the linux-ide deveopers have tested them throroughly with SiI controllers.

03:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)
05:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)

md4 : active raid10 sdf3[4] sde3[3] sdd3[2] sdc3[1] sdb3[0] sda3[5]
      131837184 blocks 256K chunks 2 near-copies [6/6] [UUUUUU]
      bitmap: 2/126 pages [8KB], 512KB chunk

md5 : active raid5 sdf4[5] sde4[4] sdd4[3] sdc4[2] sdb4[1] sda4[0]
      1719155200 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [6/6] [UUUUUU]
      bitmap: 27/164 pages [108KB], 1024KB chunk

md0 : active raid1 sdf1[5] sde1[4] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0]
      979840 blocks [6/6] [UUUUUU]
      bitmap: 0/120 pages [0KB], 4KB chunk

md0 is the boot partition, md4 is root, and md5 is the main backup data.
Note the way the drives ar arranged on the RAID-10; mirrored pairs are
aplit across different SATA controllers.

Re: suggestions for inexpensive linux jbod?

[Sven Rudolph]

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> writes:

> I'm creating a larger backup server that uses bacula (this
> software works well).

I have no idea how the "Current Implementation Restrictions" (listed
in <http://www.bacula.org/dev-manual/Current_State_Bacula.html>)
affect your backup process. From reading that list I believe that
bacula would not "work well" in my environment (differential
backups). So the following might be very subjective or
environment-dependent too.

> Has anyone used this device or have another suggestion? I'm
> looking at something that will present lots of disk to the
> linux box (fedore core 5, kernel 2.6.20) that I will put
> under md/RAID and LVM. I want to have between 1.5TB and 3.0TB
> of usable space after all the RAID'ing.

As others already suggested you could try to avoid eSATA and SATA port
multipliers by using very large SATA disks and some kind of internal
(non-eSATA) enclosure. I don't count eSATA and SATA port multipliers
as proven and reliable technology, and I avoid it. 

> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133001

Some of these comments seem to confirm my feelings.

When I needed large capacity externel JBODs I started trying SAS JBODs
with SATA disks. I finally bought DELLs MD1000 wit 500GB SATA
disks. The enclosures are connected to LSI Logic SAS controllers
(3442X-R and 3442E-R), and I run Linux SoftRAID (MD) (so this is at
least partially on-topic...) .

Works fine now (after I upgraded the LSI controller firmware).

At least another well-known vendors offers SAS JBODs (with SATA disks)
too (Hewlett-Packard), and some more from small and near-no-name
companies.

	Sven