[TriLUG] Any NAS recommendations: Linux & Windows in harmony

[John Franklin]

A few questions about your installation:

1. How much space will they need?  How many users will be connecting to 
it?
2. What OSes are the client machines running, and what is the role of 
the client machines/users?  What I'm looking for here is how intensive 
will their use of the NAS boxes be?  Solutions for video editor's 
rendering farms will be different from solutions for the secretarial 
pool.
3. Do they need backups?  What level of backups?  Weekly?  Daily?  Do 
you need to be able to snapshot the NAS box every six hours?  Is there 
a downtime where files aren't being actively modified when a 
(potentially long) backup can occur?
4. How critical is their availability/accessibility need?  That is, how 
important is it that the system not be down for a day.  Everyone says 
"critical", but there's a difference between "used while tracking the 
101st into Falujah" critical, "Air traffic controllers are using this" 
critical, and "my dentist can't bill clients without it" critical.

I know, it'd be nice if it were all OS agnostic, but SMB is good for 
Windows and NFS is good for *NIX.  There are NFS clients for Windows 
and SMB clients for *NIX, but SMB was built targeting Windows and NFS 
was built targeting *NIX.

On Jul 17, 2004, at 1:37 PM, Glen Ford wrote:

> Jason Tower wrote:
>
>> i use NAS all the time, with all kinds of clients.  however, i don't 
>> buy pre-made NAS devices, i just roll my own using a PC, large hard 
>> drives, and linux.  inexpensive, fully serviceable, fast, powerful, 
>> flexible, and (relatively) easy to administer.
>>
>> for example, one of my clients has a linux server essentially 
>> operating as a NAS device.  it uses samba, netatalk, and nfs to let 
>> PCs, macs, and linux hosts all access and share the same files and 
>> directories.  three client OSes, three protocols, one server.
>>
>> logically grouping seperate NAS devices is probably gonna be a little 
>> tricky without some kind of global file system, i'm not going to 
>> touch that here.  however using LVM you can add disks to an existing 
>> linux NAS device to quickly and easily to increase your capacity.  
>> just make sure you use LVM on top of RAID (either hardware or 
>> software) unless you're feeling mighty lucky.
>>
>> if you're interested, i'll be happy to build you something :-)
>>
>> jason
>>
>> On Saturday 17 July 2004 13:02, Glen Ford wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone on the list have any practical experiences with using NAS with
>>> Linux and Widows clients?
>>> I have been reading vendor write-ups  and am now looking for someone
>>> real life experiences with buying/installing/administering.... NAS
>>> for a Linux/Windoz environment.
>>> Also is there a way to logically group NAS units?  Say I have 3 units
>>> @ 1TB each; Can I logically group these to create a mount point that
>>> has 3TB?
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> /glen
>>>
> Jason,
>
>    I like your idea of buiding my own. I will need to do the math to 
> see if it is worth my time(client's) to do so. I will use something 
> like 
> http://www.excelmeridian.com/products/nas_datanas_dir/dndir_2u.shtml
> as guide to pricing out h/w
>
> Ease of management/security is also consideration. The commerial NAS's 
> often speak of a web interface. Again cost diff betwen buying and 
> building.
>
> will continue to read/learn about NAS.
>
> /glen
>
>
>
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-- 
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org
ICBM: 38º 56' 32.6"N 77º 24' 47.7"W Z+62m
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