Looking for suggestions on how to increase storage capacity on my system. I'm looking forward to a "full house" in the forseeable future, and I am considering solutions. Let me tell you what I've done so far.

I mounted three drives in a RAID5 configuration, using linux's 'md' driver. The resulting /dev/md0 was then added as a Physical Volume to my LVM2 Volume Group. I cut and paste bits of the VG as and when I need to create and destroy partitions. Works well, and is easy and convenient.

Then the array filled up, so I used mdadm to add/grow a fourth drive to the array, and once the array reshape was complete, did a pvresize on /dev/md0 to increase the available space in the VG. Then when it filled up again, I repeated the process with a fifth drive.

When I needed more space, I replaced all five drives with three BIG drives (horrendous expensico!) in a fresh RAID5 config and retired the five smaller drives. Eventully, I had to add/grow/pvresize a fourth BIG drive, and inevitably, a fifth.

Then I replaced the five BIG drives with three *REAL BIG* drives, retired the BIG drives. Since then, I've added *REAL BIG* drive numbers four and five. I am looking t my VG shrinking again, and I'm wondering if there might be an alternate means of upgrading in a few months time, when I'm down to the
wire.

Yes, I could repeat my previous procedure, but I'm right on the sweet-spot as it is. A 50% increase in drive-size is going to cost me a 280% increase in drive cost. So, I don't want to (can't afford to) go this way.

Yes, I can add more than five drives to the array. The motherboard will manage 8x SATA drives and I have a 4-port SATA add on board I could use as well. But trust me, more than 5 drives is a nightmare to shoehorn into any regular case, especially when there's a DVD drive in there as well. And we haven't even started abut PSU and heat issues. So I'd rather not go this way either!

So what? Some sort of NAS box, with custom cabinetry to handle 10-12 drives, and multiple big wattage PSUs? Convert from SATA to eSATA?

Ideas, please!


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Re: Mass Storage Solutions
By: Amcleod to All on Thu Dec 23 2010 01:17 pm

So what? Some sort of NAS box, with custom cabinetry to handle 10-12 drives and multiple big wattage PSUs? Convert from SATA to eSATA?

Ideas, please!

External drives? Especially if all they're used for is storage. Fill it up, unplug it, throw it in the closet, and plug a new one in.

When the externals fill your closet, closet the door, and start filling another closet in a different room.

When all closets are full, buy a storage locker and start filling that. :)

.. Or just format a drive, because you really probably don't need to be keeping more than half the stuff you have on those drives. Isn't that a form of hoarding? :)

axisd

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Re: Mass Storage Solutions
By: Access Denied to Amcleod on Fri Dec 24 2010 08:31 pm

External drives?

Yeh, I've got a friend who has adopted that approach. He has stacks of external USB drives (you could go with another interface, like eSATA or something if you wanted to). He's constantly bitching about the fact that he can't find what he wants because he doesn't remember what drive is where or which is which.

I like the idea that I have some redundancy that will help in the event of a disk failure. Also, my data is all available at any time , which is good because I do dig through it. It's all in one big partition (thanks to LVM) and not here, there and everywhere, on a number of separate partitions, which aren't all online, and don't even have consistent pmount-points!

I did find an external chassis unit that will carry 12 SATA drives (expands to 20) and connects to a 4x pcie card in your machine with a 6' cable. It costs over a grand, though, and that's before you buy any drives...


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Re: Mass Storage Solutions
By: Amcleod to Access Denied on Sat Dec 25 2010 07:07 pm


I'm waiting for the right price on a 2x eSATA enclosure that does RAID 1 - I figure 1TB of mirrored space would suit me for some time, considering I'm running on 2x320 now...

--pF


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Re: Mass Storage Solutions
By: Amcleod to Access Denied on Sat Dec 25 2010 07:07 pm

Yeh, I've got a friend who has adopted that approach. He has stacks of external USB drives (you could go with another interface, like eSATA or something if you wanted to). He's constantly bitching about the fact that h can't find what he wants because he doesn't remember what drive is where or which is which.

I guess for that, I could only suggest labeling them before throwing them on the pile of others? Though if you keep going, I'm sure it'll end up being a mess after awhile.

I like the idea that I have some redundancy that will help in the event of a disk failure. Also, my data is all available at any time , which is good because I do dig through it. It's all in one big partition (thanks to LVM) not here, there and everywhere, on a number of separate partitions, which aren't all online, and don't even have consistent pmount-points!

In that case, why not just stick with what you have, and start getting rid of what you don't need?

I have a 1 TB drive on my other desktop, and I think there's somewhere around 900 GB free. This one here has a 250 GB drive that I've never even filled. I don't like keeping stuff I don't need for that long. :)

axisd

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Re: Mass Storage Solutions
By: Poindexter Fortran to Amcleod on Sun Dec 26 2010 07:55 am

I'm waiting for the right price on a 2x eSATA enclosure that does RAID 1 - I figure 1TB of mirrored space would suit me for some time, considering I'm running on 2x320 now...

I'm currently running 5x 2Tb drives in RAID5, so I've got ~8Tb of space online.

2Tb is the sweet-spot right now, at about 90 bucks. In comparison, 3Tb drives are around $250.

Personally, I don't like racks, enclosures or disk cards that do RAID independently. If the controller fails and you can't locate a compatible replacement, your data is stuck on the drives and you have no way of getting it off. I use Linux's md driver. No (potentially) irreplacible hardware to fail.


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Amcleod wrote:

I'm currently running 5x 2Tb drives in RAID5, so I've got ~8Tb of space online.

2Tb is the sweet-spot right now, at about 90 bucks. In comparison, 3Tb drives
are around $250.

Personally, I don't like racks, enclosures or disk cards that do RAID independently. If the controller fails and you can't locate a compatible replacement, your data is stuck on the drives and you have no way of getting it
off. I use Linux's md driver. No (potentially) irreplacible hardware to fail.

Just curious what host OS/platform you're running... just presuming linux.. or are you using FreeNAS (BSD Based), OpenFiler or something similar?

--
Michael J. Ryan - http://tracker1.info/

... FRA #008: Small print leads to large risk.

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