[Novalug] Best Workplace file server

bidwell bidwell@dead-city.org
Thu Oct 22 21:27:30 EDT 2009


William Morse wrote:
> Dear LUGers,
> 
> Today's emotionally charged discussion has convinced me to abandon my
> natural timidity and ask a question. If the regulars on this list feel
> self-conscious I suppose I'll never get over that "exposed" feeling.
> Also, last week's discussion about home file servers was very
> enlightening. 
> 
> But what about servers for the workplace?
> 
> I work for a non-profit that has until recently run a LAMP stack on one
> machine, just waiting for something to break.
> 
> We figured out how to get Ubuntu Server up on two physical machines,
> create a few virtualized guests using KVM , get heartbeat to have
> servers look out for each other and use rsync to mirror our websites.
> Yipee!
> 
> So now I am ready to turn my mind to storing all the fabulous content my
> coworkers plan to create. 
> 
> Let's suppose I have a budget under $10K. Where can I find out what I
> can build? The instructions at
> http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-
> cheap-cloud-storage/ were a little over my head. 
> 
> Any thoughts would be appreciated.
> 
> 
> --
> William Morse
William,
I have so many questions before I even want to think about price.
How much space do you want, how redundant, what kind of data
will be stored (big files, many small files), how will the
data be used (lots of reads vs lots of writes, files or databases).
For under $10,000 you can get an Dell MD1000 loaded with 15 500G
Sata drives and 3 year next day warrenty. But that doesn't even
give you the server to hook them up to or much room to grow.

I know non profits can be tough when it comes to spending money,
so it's good to figure out what you are going to provide and
what level of service ahead of time. Also over budget, as
spending less is always going to make you look better while
overspending is going to make you look not so good.

Matt



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