File Server low on space - best course of action?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

 

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 with 8x 300Gb HDDs in a RAID-5 configuration. I only have 240Gb left before I am out of space and I fully expect this to be gone by this time next year.

 

I don't have enough in my budget to afford a NAS/SAN solution so I'm panicing a little bit! I can't expand the RAID so purchasing some extra disks is not an option.

 

What would you suggest as a relatively inexpensive method to resolve this inevitable problem? I've already got quotas in place and free'd up as much space as possible.

 

Thanks!

[Duke]

I don't have enough in my budget to afford a NAS/SAN solution so I'm panicing a little bit!

 

What kind of budget do you have? You can pick up a 16TB (raw) SAN/NAS (i.e. iSCSI, NFS and CIFS) for under £2k. Map it via iSCSI to the Windows server and that way you could keep all your management done through Windows.

 

Chris

[Iain.Faulkner]

Have you got limits set on users home drives etc?

[plexer]

I'd get some quotas enforced using fsrm if I were you to manage the space left.

 

Ben

[jamesfed]

Have you looked at DAS? Even cheaper than NAS/SAN in some cases as the connection between your server and storage is via a normal SAS cable and not over the network.

Depending on the RAID card you have in already it might already support DAS.

[dhicks]

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900

 

With 3 5.25" expansion slots in the front? Remove whatever's in them and install a five-disk internal caddy (£120):

 

LinITX.com - Internal Drive Bays

 

Or maybe the three-disk version if there's a bit less space (don't worry about removing the DVD drive, just buy a USB one instead for the very rare occasions when you need to use it). Buy 5 2TB harddrives (£50 each?), and you might need to buy another SATA controller card to plug them all in (£50?). Should give you 8TB of usable storage for around £450.

[plexer]

Or replace your current hard drives with larger ones?

 

Ben

[bandgeekmafia78]

Have you got limits set on users home drives etc?

 

Yep. We had hard quotas in place but then changed this to soft quotas as the Art and Design students were unable to save their stupidly large files.

[bandgeekmafia78]

Or replace your current hard drives with larger ones?

 

Ben

 

If we replaced the current hard drives one-by-one, wouldnt this 'break' the existing RAID configuration? Or could you allow the data to stripe across each new hard drive one at a time?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Or replace your current hard drives with larger ones?

 

Ben

 

If we replaced the current hard drives one-by-one, wouldnt this 'break' the existing RAID configuration? Or could you allow the data to stripe across each new hard drive one at a time?

[Duke]

If we replaced the current hard drives one-by-one, wouldnt this 'break' the existing RAID configuration? Or could you allow the data to stripe across each new hard drive one at a time?

 

Depends on the RAID card. Best course of action by far would be to back up the data, wipe the array, put in new disks, build a new array at the larger size, then restore the data. What may work depending on the card would be to replace all the disks one at a time allowing a rebuild in between, then 'grow' the array to take up the extra space now available on all disks, then expand the Windows partition (using something like GParted may be easier than doing it in Windows depending on your setup).

 

Chris