NAS devices

[gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 06/01/2010 09:28 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On Jun 1, 2010, at 8:11 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>    
>> In terms of performance, reliability, speed, backups, and every
>> characteristic that I can basically think of mattering in a NAS, I would say
>> solaris/opensolaris/ZFS would be the better solution.
>>      
> OpenAFS on, well, any Unix of your choice beats ZFS for all of the above.  ZFS's snapshot and clone mechanisms are straight from AFS.  With redundant OpenAFS file server machines you'll find it hard to beat it for reliability.  The OpenAFS cache mechanism blows away any other SAN or NAS for speed.  Better security, better scalability across disk devices and clients, the easiest and most transparent volume migration I've ever seen, OpenAFS wins, hands down.
>
> On the other hand, OpenAFS needs more work to initially set up, and it requires a Kerberos realm.  The lock mechanism doesn't work (intentionally) for large, shared databases.  It's designed for large scale university environments: lots of concurrent users with lots of files on lots of nodes distributed around a large geographic area.  OpenAFS is overkill for a small shop with a handful of users.
>
> Anyway, just noting it as an option.
>
>    
Maybe so. We currently have 6 people in the office who use the Linux 
systems, and we will be adding 3 people in the near future, and we 
should start to max out our SCSI NFS server within a few months. We tend 
to maintain a lot of client data, but we are a relatively small shop. I 
happen to be the IT person even though I am a software engineer with no 
real system management experience.  I think it would be easier for my 
boss to build up an existing Linux box than to buy a commercial Unix 
box, whether Solaris, HP-UX or AIX.

-- 
Jerry Feldman<gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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