Data Storage - 30 terabyte solution?

Author

30 terabyte solution?

Dan Stromberg

2004-11-16, 8:45 pm

We're needing to get specs on a storage solution with the following
attributes:

1) Costs between $50k and $200k

2) Can store 30 terabytes with a single, unified namespace

3) Doesn't have to be blazing fast. We've only discussed RAID solutions
internally so far, but I suspect they might find a tape jukebox or HSM
solution acceptable

4) Will interoperate with AIX in some way. Reexporting a mount over NFS
is acceptable, but if AIX can use the filesystem natively, so much the
better.

5) Some expandability would be good, with a continued, single namespace

Does this solution happen to allow the use of 251G SATA
drives? We have a lot of those.

Thanks!

Charles Morrall

2004-11-17, 8:45 pm

"Dan Stromberg" <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> skrev i meddelandet
news:pan.2004.11.17.02.26.21.727765@dcs.nac.uci.edu...
>
> We're needing to get specs on a storage solution with the following
> attributes:
>
> 1) Costs between $50k and $200k

Speced an iSCSI/SATA array with 31TB raw capacity using 250GB SATA drives.
Costs about $95k

>
> 2) Can store 30 terabytes with a single, unified namespace
>

I'm not really a unix guy, so I'm not sure what "single, unified namespace"
would mean. I'd have to carve out 15 LUNs, each 2TB.

> 3) Doesn't have to be blazing fast. We've only discussed RAID solutions
> internally so far, but I suspect they might find a tape jukebox or HSM
> solution acceptable
>

It won't be blazingly fast, but it will allow 2x1Gbit iSCSI and hw RAID.

> 4) Will interoperate with AIX in some way. Reexporting a mount over NFS
> is acceptable, but if AIX can use the filesystem natively, so much the
> better.

AIX seems to have an iSCSI initiator driver, so the storage space will be
natively available.

>
> 5) Some expandability would be good, with a continued, single namespace
>
> Does this solution happen to allow the use of 251G SATA
> drives? We have a lot of those.

It does use 250GB SATA drives, but the solution I speced uses a hotplug
carrier and probably some special firmware. They're Maxtor drives behind the
OEM label.

/charles

Feel free to contact me directly if you need the details, but I'm not going
to advertise any special brands here.

Faeandar

2004-11-17, 8:45 pm

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 02:25:38 GMT, Dan Stromberg
<strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> wrote:

>
>We're needing to get specs on a storage solution with the following
>attributes:
>
>1) Costs between $50k and $200k
>
>2) Can store 30 terabytes with a single, unified namespace
>
>3) Doesn't have to be blazing fast. We've only discussed RAID solutions
>internally so far, but I suspect they might find a tape jukebox or HSM
>solution acceptable
>
>4) Will interoperate with AIX in some way. Reexporting a mount over NFS
>is acceptable, but if AIX can use the filesystem natively, so much the
>better.
>
>5) Some expandability would be good, with a continued, single namespace
>
>Does this solution happen to allow the use of 251G SATA
>drives? We have a lot of those.

>
>Thanks!
>

You mention the namespace twice, what namespace are you referring to?
NFS? Or do you have something else in place?

For the amount of storage you want at the price you want there a
likely several vendros that can fit that bill, the question is are yo
looking for this as DAS, SAN array, or NAS?

For DAS Nexsan has been good to me. And you can easily get the amount
of space you're talking about within your budget. Any OS can use it.
Can't speak to NAS much. I know mainly NetApp and there's not much
you're gonna get in that price range.
Nexsan can do SAN array's in that price point too. In fact it may be
the same box that is DAS, just with fiber ports fronting it.

~F

Dan Stromberg

2004-11-17, 8:45 pm

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:49:26 +0000, Faeandar wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 02:25:38 GMT, Dan Stromberg
> <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> wrote:
>
>
> You mention the namespace twice, what namespace are you referring to?
> NFS? Or do you have something else in place?

The primary owner of the IBM SP2 compute cluster this would be hooked to,
very much wants a single-filesystem solution for this.

> For the amount of storage you want at the price you want there a
> likely several vendros that can fit that bill, the question is are yo
> looking for this as DAS, SAN array, or NAS?

Anything that'll work reliably, not glacially slow (but not necessarily
that fast either), and give a single filesystem. And it's gotta work with
AIX 5.1 in some way.

> For DAS Nexsan has been good to me. And you can easily get the amount
> of space you're talking about within your budget. Any OS can use it.
> Can't speak to NAS much. I know mainly NetApp and there's not much
> you're gonna get in that price range.
> Nexsan can do SAN array's in that price point too. In fact it may be
> the same box that is DAS, just with fiber ports fronting it.

Thanks, I'll check into Nexsan.

Anybody else out there had good or bad experiences with Nexsan?

David

2004-11-18, 7:45 am

Dan Stromberg <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.11.18.02.39.43.787416@dcs.nac.uci.edu>...[vbcol=seagreen]
> On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:49:26 +0000, Faeandar wrote:
>

Another option is a clustered filesystem like SGI's CXFS. That supports
AIX clients plus other platforms. More expensive than NAS but may
be better in a heterogeneous environment, and will perform better.

David

Jan-Frode Myklebust

2004-11-20, 5:45 pm

On 2004-11-18, Dan Stromberg <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu> wrote:
>
> The primary owner of the IBM SP2 compute cluster this would be hooked to,
> very much wants a single-filesystem solution for this.

I would consider buying a bunch of fibre channel Nexsan ataboys, or
Infortrend eonstore units (or maybe there's a similar FAStT system from
IBM?). Connect them via fibre channel to all SP2's and run GPFS as
cluster filesystem. That should give you a single filesystem, with
locally connected filesystem type performance and very high
availability compared to a NFS solution.

-jf