We use FTP server to distribute a lot of files.Hard links are used extensively as we have a lot of identical files named differently.
We also have a secondary FTP/WWW server as failover for the primary one.Files are rscynced via ssh from the primary FTP. Both server have local RAID 1 disks.
Unfortunately secondary server has less storage than the primary one and this resulted in the situation where it ran out of storage.This is a production server and I need to have as little intervention as possible to fix this problem.
I have two ideas how to recify it:
1. Create LUN on iSCSI SAN and attach it to the secondary server.However this server has never been connected to iSCSi and I would need to organise a downtime to be on a safe side.Also there is a risk that iSCSi may not work well on this server as there is no time to test it.
2. open NFS on primary server ( both servers are on the same Gb switch).Serve /home where all files are via NFS.The problem here I don't know how NFS would perform in this setup and whether there are any protocol limitations - we never used NFS in our shop.
3. Any other setup
What would you do? This is more or less a temporary soution as we will be relocating to the datacenter within a year.
NFS would certainly work, but you need to define what you are trying to protect against. If you have two servers for I/O performance or disaster recovery, NFS mounts and LUNs on disks are not really going to get you there.