want to add 5-7 external drives

I have a 7 drive raidz2 server that is going to be full in about six to nine
months. I'm starting to look into inexpensive means to increase the
server's capacity.

Possibilities:
1) a 5-in-3 adapter in the server's space for 3 5" optical drives to hold 5
drives. Drive bracket hanging over motherboard can hold another two drives.
Cons: poor cooling for drive bracket. no optical drive (can use usb drive or
nfs copied updates or nfs jumpstart)

2) esata card, and external drive case with port multiplier.
Cons: no port multiplier support yet; when it first arrives, it may be
buggy.

3) whole new server
Cons: new drive array won't be pooled with existing array.

4) who new server using iscsi
have new server make its drives available to the old server using iscsi.
Cons: does solaris support iscsi?

5) usb
Cons: who the hell wants a stack of 7 usb drives? Largest cases have 5
drives but typically have loud fans.


Any other ideas for something on the cheap?

On 08 Apr 2008 17:01:20 GMT, Andrew Gabriel <andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
>Swap out the existing drives for larger ones, one at a time
>to allow the raidz2 to resync. (I've done this with ZFS mirrors,
>but not with a ZFS raidz.)[/color]

I've considered that option. I currently have 7 500G drives in the array.
7 1TB drives would be a bit pricey for now although prices are dropping
*fast*. They may be down to $125 by the time I need to do the upgrade.

When I built the server, 750G drives were hovering around $270 and they're
already below $150 barely 12 months later.

AZ Nomad <aznomad.3@premoveobthisox.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> On 08 Apr 2008 17:01:20 GMT, Andrew Gabriel <andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk> wrote:[color=green]
>>Swap out the existing drives for larger ones, one at a time
>>to allow the raidz2 to resync. (I've done this with ZFS mirrors,
>>but not with a ZFS raidz.)[/color]
>
> I've considered that option. I currently have 7 500G drives in the array.
> 7 1TB drives would be a bit pricey for now although prices are dropping
> *fast*. They may be down to $125 by the time I need to do the upgrade.[/color]

If you can't afford the amount of storage you want, suggestions of what to
do won't help at all.

In article <ftilnj$ul$1@reader2.panix.com>,
Cydrome Leader <presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:[color=blue]
>I hope you realize that you get what you pay for when it comes to lots of
>cheap storage. There's no way around it. You might want to be saving for a
>tape drive before you start to add even more drives to what you have now.[/color]

If the problem is cheap, poorly supported eSATA HBAs, perhaps a JBOD
enclosure for cheap SATA disks with a more expensive, better supported
fibre channel interface will help the OP.

I don't know if such a beast exists, but some of Sun's DAS use cheap
SATA disks and FC host interfaces.

John
[email]groenveld@acm.org[/email]

AZ Nomad wrote:[color=blue]
> I have a 7 drive raidz2 server that is going to be full in about six to nine
> months. I'm starting to look into inexpensive means to increase the
> server's capacity.
>
> Possibilities:
> 1) a 5-in-3 adapter in the server's space for 3 5" optical drives to hold 5
> drives. Drive bracket hanging over motherboard can hold another two drives.
> Cons: poor cooling for drive bracket. no optical drive (can use usb drive or
> nfs copied updates or nfs jumpstart)
>
> 2) esata card, and external drive case with port multiplier.
> Cons: no port multiplier support yet; when it first arrives, it may be
> buggy.
>
> 3) whole new server
> Cons: new drive array won't be pooled with existing array.
>
> 4) who new server using iscsi
> have new server make its drives available to the old server using iscsi.
> Cons: does solaris support iscsi?
>
> 5) usb
> Cons: who the hell wants a stack of 7 usb drives? Largest cases have 5
> drives but typically have loud fans.
>[/color]
6) Move everything into a full tower case with a couple of decent (I use
Supremicro CSE-M35T1) 5 way drive caddies.

--
Ian Collins.

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:56:55 +0000 (UTC), John D Groenveld <groenvel@cse.psu.edu> wrote:[color=blue]
>In article <ftilnj$ul$1@reader2.panix.com>,
>Cydrome Leader <presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:[color=green]
>>I hope you realize that you get what you pay for when it comes to lots of
>>cheap storage. There's no way around it. You might want to be saving for a
>>tape drive before you start to add even more drives to what you have now.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
>If the problem is cheap, poorly supported eSATA HBAs, perhaps a JBOD
>enclosure for cheap SATA disks with a more expensive, better supported
>fibre channel interface will help the OP.[/color]
[color=blue]
>I don't know if such a beast exists, but some of Sun's DAS use cheap
>SATA disks and FC host interfaces.[/color]

I was thinking of the possibility of using iscsi for something similar.
Throw a cheap motherboard with a pile of drives in an inexpensive server
chassis connected to the main server with a dedicated gigabit ethernet.
Install solaris and set it up as an iscsi target which would
hopefully be accessable by the main file server.