[Discuss] Storage question follow-up

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Peter Jalajas <pjalajas at tebuco.com> wrote:

>
> I wasn't fully prepared to ask my storage question Wed. night.  I've
> now tried to draw a picture of my situation/concept in google docs:
>   http://goo.gl/K98JN
> I hope that better explains what I'm trying to do.  I'm guessing it's
> fairly easy to implement, if I just knew which of the several
> closely-related tools to use.  I'm hoping someone can look at that
> diagram and say, "Oh, I see what you're trying to do.  Go with
> <Tool-X>, that does exactly what you're trying to do".  I'd prefer to
> use Linux (Ubuntu).  Our problem is storage of 100s of xGB video
> files, and file-directory management. I want to be able to present an
> "N Drive" CIFS/SMB share to the users, under which they'll be able to
> easily drill down to their files; and on the back-end, to be able to
> efficiently use the NAS boxes we have, and simply add more NAS boxes
> (or other device type you recommend) to the ethernet switch as we fill
> up the old ones.  Or something like that.  I'll worry about bandwidth
> and backup of the bit pile later...


You might consider going to one big honking file server (on the
cheap).   BackBlaze has open sourced
their hardware designs for massive systems into which you can install
your own drives.   They just announced a third iteration of the design
that holds 45 drives.  Their claim is that they build such a system
for about $2000 (in quantity with no drives).   Your price would
probably be higher, but probably no more then 50% more.    It sounds
like you could pull the SATA drives out of all your old equipment and
just plug them into a single filer server.   Going forward you could
swap out low density with higher density drives as they become
available.   Current max capacity (with 4 TB drives) is 180 Petabytes.
  That's close to 50 million 4GByte video files.   Here's their blog
entry about it:

http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/

Bill Bogstad