[linux-lvm] stable lvm of over 2 terabytes?

[Dan Stromberg]

I'd like to evaluate a roughly 30 terabyte linux lvm (or md?) setup. 
This is to be done over a number of nbd devices, spread across 5 or more
nbd servers (each of which has a number of RAID cards installed in it).

We prefer out-of-box solutions to patching (although we're capable of
patching - but if the support isn't out-of-box then you end up patching
each time there's a security problem).  We mostly use RHEL 3 at this
point, but would be willing to switch to another distribution to get
stable 30 terabyte lvm (or md?).

Do we need kernel 2.6.x?  Do we need lvm2?  Can we use the in-kernel md
on a 2.6 based distribution?

Are there any distributions that have what we want right out of the
box?  Is anyone -using- such a configuration in production?  This is to
be hooked up to an AIX supercomputer over NFS, and we can't afford much
downtime.

Thanks.

-- 
Dan Stromberg DCS/NACS/UCI <strombrg at dcs.nac.uci.edu>