On Wed, 2008-01-23 at 10:03 -0700, Devin Atencio wrote:
>
> I am currently looking into options for what might be the best
> and hopefully cheap way to add external storage to some machines
> that can be used by multiple servers.
>
> I realize that obviously some kind of external storage unit probably
> attached to NFS might be my best option. I have also seen the product
> from Coraid (http://www.coraid.com) that provides a device that does
> ATA over Ethernet. Does anyone have experience with this product, or
> can give me other alternatives?
----
no first hand experience with the coraid devices but they have been at
it for a few years now and probably have ironed out most of the
wrinkles.
What is missing is the type of storage you intend to use this with
because that would probably dramatically impact. File storage is
different than serving a MySQL or PostgreSQL database or mail server,
because the NFS is suitable for file storage but not likely suitable for
the other needs.
The common method for multi-server data storage is fibre channel
storage. Low cost is not one of its best features though.
For low cost storage, you should also look at serial attached SCSI (SAS)
and external SATA (eSATA) but this is really single system storage.
What I have found is that it is hard to get low cost storage at a
cheaper price than buying a whole server with the amount of internal
storage and sharing it via NFS/Samba/Netatalk or whatever protocols
necessary to accomplish the task but again, this isn't suitable for some
protocols like databases.
Craig
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