[TriLUG] Basement SAN

[Mike Johnson]

sholton at mindspring.com [sholton at mindspring.com] wrote:
> 
> I'm looking to setup a "basement" SAN. As such, I'd like something which:
>  - Is 100% free software, or Linux-leaning, or at least compatible.
>  - Can be built in pieces so that I don't have to slip too much past 
> the Wife's budget at one time.
>  - Won't tie me down to a single vendor.
> 
> I'm open to suggestions for hardware, sourceforge project pages, experiences,
> recommendations, etc.

The first question you have to answer is NAS vs SAN.  NAS ~= NFS/Samba.
SAN ~= ext3/xfs/reiser/wtf on direct attached storage.  You're not going
to be able to aford a fibre channel switch.  Trust me.  Now, if you're
wanting to play around with clustered filesystems and the like, recall
our visit from Oracle and take a look at:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter_rac.html
(ignore the Oracle specific parts).

That really will be your cheapest way of playing with something
SAN-like.

The alternative is NAS, as others have mentioned.  The little Linksys
boxes look quite hackable and will get you what you want for way cheap.
Hell, I'm thinking about it.

Mike
-- 
"Spare me your space-age technobabble Atilla The Hun!" --  Zapp Brannigan

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