Thoughts on "enterprise" storage solution.

[Stephen Carville]

Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> Hey all, this is probably slightly off-topic, but I figured it might be a good
> place to start.
> 
> We're looking at replacing our "old" home directory storage solution.
> Essentially it's a bunch of old Solaris boxes sharing their disks via NFS.
> Users log on their various systems using NIS/LDAP and using automount are able
> to access their home directories off this server.
> 
> Several solutions have been proposed... dedicated SAN's and such with a couple
> front-ends.  All have fairly steep price tags and typically end up involving
> Sun hardware.
> 
> I'm trying to come up with some alternate solutions, hopefully using RHEL on
> Dell/other hardware.  Is RH's NFS performance/stability up their with Sun's?
> I know in the past it's been recommended to go with a BSD for solid Intel NFS
> performance.
> 
> What type of solutions do some of you use out there for this type of shared
> disk or home directory providing services?  Any specific lists where this type
> of thing might be discussed and/or be on-topic?  Using GFS with something like
> a PowerVault or EMC looks interesting... 

I found NFS version 3 on RHEL to be reliable.  Version 4 is not, IMO, 
ready for prime time.  I have a 197 G LV full of home directories I 
export using both samba and NFS.

It's been about three years since my last Sun box went away but as I 
recall, the Linux automounter worked much better than the Sun version.

> Thanks!
> Ray
> 


-- 
Stephen Carville <stephen at totalflood.com>
Systems Engineer
Land America