joegalliano

Another free storage server which has ZFS, NFS, CIFs etc There is also a AD guide http://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/

Have you considered Ubuntu running ZFS, Samaba and authentication serviceswith DAS storage perhaps to keep down overheads

We use SCCM, its only £500 under our Camous Agreement

Just checked Compellen't ZNAS runs ZFS, CIFS & NFS

Hi, I know Dell are working on clustered nas with Patents aquired from Exastor & they are working to integrate this with their Eqlogic & Compellent SANS. I looked at Exastor a few years ago and its has ISCSI, FC, NAS i,e Cifs & NFS. Dells Compellent SAN also has ZFS and Cifs NAS available now, not sure if you can run the two together though. May also be worth keeping your netapp for now and possibly look at something like Falconstor or another storage virtualization product until Dell have got their products sorted. 1 last option may be Open E, but I am not sure if it has support for ZFS if that is required. Data Storage Software V6 (DSS V6) - Comparison | Open-E

Dave-O For clarity, the server is an ESXi Host (Dell R815 with 4 x 4 12 core CPUs, 64 GB RAM) which will have several guest instances. We purchased 2 x 2 port 10 Gig fibre NICs as this results in less physical cabling and indeed is actually cheaper (for us) than several 4 port copper Gig cards. The switch has the appropriate modules installed. We are an FE/HE college and tend to use a lot of CAD, mulitmedia and rendering by ultimately around 2000 clients so we are scaling for future needs (with a 5 year server lifecycle) not just the here and now. As my earlier post, the clients and server all connect directly into the 5412 and clients take around 20 seconds to boot from power on. We regulary see Gig ports on our network with utilisation at 70% (be it to our EMC filers where all the CAD content etc. is stored), so our network can be pretty busy hence the reasoning for 10 Gig from the off so to speak. We are still at POC stage at present but once I have firm stats I will post. Joe

We have just deployed 70 Wyse R900Ls on WSM, the solution is very scalable and fault tolerent. We have no performance issues whatsoever, our clients boot the OS quickly and they are able to run CAD & mutilmedia as well as traditional fat clients. We found that network latency and disk IO are the most important performance factors and to ensure excellent client performance all clients are connected at 1 Gbps into the same core switch (HP Procureve 5412) as the server which is running at 10 Gbps. For high speed throughput and low IO latency we stored the OS images on a 256 GB PCIE SSD card Costs are very comparable to PCs (be it low end) and we are hoping to scale to upwards of 1200 clients over the next 2 years. Unlike other some desktop virtulalisation products shared storage is not a requirement which helps keep CAPEX and OPEX costs down.

Just some info for people interested in WSM or similar technology. We have just deployed 70 Wyse R900Ls on WSM, the solution is very scalable and fault tolerent. We found that network latency and disk IO are the most important performance factors and to ensure excellent client performance all clients are connected at 1 Gbps into the same core switch (HP Procureve 5412) as the server which is running at 10 Gbps. For high speed throughput and low IO latency we stored the OS images on a 256 GB PCIE SSD card

Yes disks are avilable, 36 GB 73 GB and possibly 146 and 300 GBs, either 10 or 15k whichever you require Joe

Hi Everyone I have a fair bit of old spare kit which could still probably do a job for somebody out there. I am happy to trade, sell, or even give away Here's a breakdown of the kit Extremenetworks Blackdiamond 6808 core switch with 24 x 10/100/1000 ports, 8 x Fibre SX 1000 Ports, 48 x 10/100 UTP and 32 x 100 SX Fibre ports with 2 x PSU and 1 management module. (£750?) Extremenetworks Summit 48SI switch with 48 10/100 Ports x 4 x Fibre SX 1000 (2 gbics included) (£30 - £40?) 1 HP DL380 G4 Storage server with 1 x 3 Ghz CPU and 3 GB Ram (£150?) 3 x HP DL360 G4s with Dual 3 Ghz CPUs (shows 4 with hyperthreading) and 3 GB RAM (£75? each) 2 DL380s G4s with 1 Cpu and 2 GB Ram (£50 each ) Around 6 DL 360s mostly G3s with 1 Cpus and 1 GB Ram (£20 each) 2 X HP MSA 1000 Modular SANS with 4 x MSA20 Disk shelves and various disks (£200 per MSA100, £50 per MSA20) A quantum S3 SDLT Autoloader (£150) Some of this kit is very heavy so will need to be collected. Thanks for Reading Joe

Open E (unified storage solution) may also be worth looking at, you can use more or less whatever commodity hardware from Dell, HP etc but with all the functionality associated with the big boys such Netapp, EMC HDS etc without the cost. Has some nice feature sets (ISCI FC, snapshots, NDMP replication for DR), for a very low aquisition costs "The Open-E Data Storage Software V6 (DSS V6) is a unified file and block storage management operating system (OS) that provides Network Attached Storage (NAS), iSCSI, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN) functionality. Open-E DSS V6 provides superior performance, security, and scalability at a fraction of the cost of alternative storage offerings. Advanced features of Open-E DSS V6 include Data and Volume Replication, Volume Snapshot, Automatic Failover for iSCSI Volumes, WORM and NDMP. Additionally, Open-E DSS V6 supports a wide variety of hardware RAID platforms from the industry’s leading names. The versatility of the Open-E DSS V6 also allows users to combine NAS systems with iSCSI SAN systems, and provides built-in virus protection, while enabling the connection of multiple Network Interface Controllers, including Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand. Open-E DSS V6 is easily downloaded to any hardware device for simplified access". Open-E DSS V6 includes NAS and iSCSI functionality and advanced features such as: * Installable on any media: internal HDD, RAID Array, USB, SATA and IDE DOM, or any other bootable media * Enhanced Graphical User Interface * NDMP v. 4 * Symantec Backup Exec backup agent (RALUS) to support versions 11, 12 and 12.5 * Basic API Configuration * Improved random performance of iSCSI * Windows Server 2008 Clustering Support (persistent reservation SCSI-3) * Hardware RAID Support * Automatic Failover for iSCSI Volumes * Volume and Data Replication * Asynchronous Volume Replication Over WAN * Volume Snapshot * iSCSI Initiator / iSCSI Target * Backup Functionality * WORM (Write Once Read Many) Support * Shadow Copy of OS for System Update * Multiple Network Interface Card (NIC) Support * Network Bonding/Teaming * Task Mechanism with Scheduling * Network UPS Support * Fibre Channel Support * Multi-CPU Support * IP-SEC Minimum Hardware Requirements: * x86 - compatible PC * 1 GByte RAM * CPU (1 GHz or faster are recommended) * HDD (SATA, SAS, SCSI, ATA) / RAID / Fibre Channel / iSCSI Storage * Network Interface Card (multi-cards 1Gb/s recommended for bonding)

Have a look at untangle