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

[Jason Tower]

if you're really interested in setting this up yourself vs. paying big 
bucks to a third party, there's nothing here that linux can't handle - 
between samba, LVM, rsync, and a little scripting everything you've 
outlined is entirely doable.  the trickiest part is probably setting up 
the snapshots, but the combination of LVM and rsync should be able do 
what you need.  some preliminary testing of that particular 
functionality would be prudent of course.  the hardest part is choosing 
the hardware - tried and tested scsi vs. less expensive sata.

jason

On Sunday 18 July 2004 14:02, Glen Ford wrote:
> John Franklin wrote:
> > A few questions about your installation:
> >
> > 1. How much space will they need?
>
> 6TB
>
> >   How many users will be connecting to it?
>
> 10-30
>
> > 2. What OSes are the client machines running
>
> Windows XP
>
> > and what is the role of the client machines/users?
>
> Running specialty app that crunches large amounts of data
>
> >   What I'm looking for here is how intensive will their use of the
> > NAS boxes be?
>
> Large amount of time with small updates and then large spikes in data
> writes.
>
> >   Solutions for video editor's rendering farms will be different
> > from solutions for the secretarial pool.
>
> This would be large specialized databases
>
> > 3. Do they need backups?
>
> YES
>
> >   What level of backups?
>
> FULL snapshot.  I.E. copy all data to seprate NAS .
>
> >   Weekly?  Daily?  Do you need to be able to snapshot the NAS box
> > every six hours?
>
> Snap shot once a day and option for on demand snap shot
>
> >   Is there a downtime where files aren't being actively modified
> > when a (potentially long) backup can occur?
>
> Not sure. Need to talk to D/B folks about quescing
>
> > 4. How critical is their availability/accessibility need?
>
> Very, as in lots O'money depends on it.
>
> >   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.
>
> Current solution is SMB. See no reason to change
>
> > On Jul 17, 2004, at 1:37 PM, Glen Ford wrote:
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