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JMS77
Asked: 2010-04-21 09:44:07 +0800 CST

hardware for bulding unified storage solution using nexentastor

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looking to build a box for holding 5 to 8 TB of storage using nexentastor OS. without using commercial solutions like netapp.

my current list is:

Intel Xeon

8GB of RAM

RAID controller with 256MB cache

what to choose for disks? can any sigle server host more than 5TB disks? Dell Poweredge? HP DL or ML Series?

nfs netapp zfs storage dell-poweredge

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Don't know about Dell but HP have the following;

    • DL360 - 8 x 2.5" in 1U
    • DL370 - 24 x 2.5", 14 x 3.5" in 4U
    • DL380 - 16 x 2.5 in 2U

    Any of these can be combined with a number of the following disk shelves;

    • D2700 - 25 x 2.5" in 2U
    • MDS 600 - 70 x 3.5" in 5U

    This last item allows you to have 576 x 3.5" + 16 x 2.5" for a total of 1.12PB in a single 42U rack.

    Edit - but on a serious note just about any server will allow you to have 4 x 3.5" 2TB disks but if you want faster 2.5" disks they only come in 600GB sizes at the moment so you'd need 14 of them just for RAID 0 (28 for R10, 15 for R5 and 16 for R6).

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  2. Look at SUperMicro - they can build you complete servers (barebone, a distributor of them will fill in the rest) that holds:

    • 24 discs in 2 height units (2.5"). THat is - hm - with 1tb discs, Raid 6... about 20tb.
    • 48 (!) discs in I think 5 units, 3.5" - calculate this out yourself for 2tb per disc.

    In general Dell etc. suck for that - simply the wrong cases, not holding enough Discs. SuperMicro is the best I found (http://www.supermicro.com/)

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  3. Check the solaris or opensolaris HCL:

    http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/

    http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/os/

    Do you want to go DIY? Check this:

    http://www.greenm3.com/2009/10/opensolaris-green-home-server-low-power-and-small.html

    For ZFS better don't invest too much money in RAID hardware and buy more ram instead.

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  4. "For ZFS better don't invest too much money in RAID hardware and buy more ram instead."

    Second that! OpenSolaris and ZFS is a huge memory hog combination. Another consideration is also around ensuring that you have a more current AMD, if that is your processor of choice as it appears OpenSolaris is very "picky" with the older lines.

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