Can Linux provide enterprise class NAS on a Windows network?
 

Just looking into the possibilities of using Linux to provide NAS Windows network.

I assume the stack would be:

Samba server
NAS server
SAN
iSCSI Initiators
iSCSI Targets

Question is just how Industrial Strength and Enterprise Class would a Linux storage stack actually be. Would I end up with a storage solution which supported live migration and resizing for example?

Your opinions would be appreciated.
Nick

Since you've managed to combine NAS, samba, iscsi and san into an unholy, unworkable, Titanic class disaster, maybe you should learn the role of each first.

-You don't know enough to understand what a detailed answer would provide, so I'll go easy on you.
-You have exceeded your buzzword allowance forever. Get thee some hardware (no Dell Vostro's) and a distro and figure it out or hire someone who can synchronize enterprise storage management demands with the mission critical 24-7/365 services to maximize Enterprise efficiency.

Live migration: Sure. A few different ways.
Resizing: Sure. A few different ways.

Have a look at...

FreeNAS http://www.freenas.org/

--C

Hi custangro, yep tried freeNAS; it is ok for home or small office use but for enterprise storage it seems you need to upgrade to TrueNAS.

Nick

Thank you for your, comments mpapet. I fail to see how it would be possible to provide enterprise class storage solutions without incorporating all of these 'buzzword' components as you call them. My question is how complete a storage solution can be delivered using Linux in a Windows environment with the currently available versions of these items. Do they all work well together together, or would I be wasting my time trying to get this lot working, should we just stick with Windows Storage Server?

Those buzz words serve multiple purposes, none of which benefit you.

No. Per my first post, Get thee some hardware (no Dell Vostro's) and a distro like Debian and figure it out.

Depends on a couple of things.
-Do you want to be a point-and-click admin forever constrained by Microsoft's inflexibility? Some people like being spoonfed. Org's love it because you are easily interchanged with the legions of point-and-click admins.
-Will your organization tolerate a mixed environment? Again, this gets back to your organization's motivations/preferences/whatever.

I run exactly what you are describing and haven't had an issue with the storage layer in years. I'll go easy on you and give you a goal. I will assume you have legitimate shared storage. (fibre channel, SCSI, etc)

-Build a cluster using corosync and pacemaker.
-Add shared storage and iSCSItarget as services.
-Present the storage as a bare LUN via iscsitarget and let your windows hosts run the disks.

Your RAID hardware should allow you to expand the RAID unless you have cheap-o RAID. Long ago I was burned by Dell's awful featureless hardware RAID. Hopefully that's improved. Linux's software RAID is very powerful, so you've got that to fall back on. Alternatively, you can present a logical volume. There are other alternatives.

This is Linux, more than one way to do a job, and do it well.

However, my gut feeling is you are looking for an excuse to stick to Windows based on the question and reply. Prove me wrong and get busy.

Just looking for confirmation that it is actually possible and not just another almost but not quite yet working type promise. Didn't want to waste lots of time investigating this further if the end result was simply to conclude that it doesn't quite work yet.

Thanks,
Nick

Care to elaborate?

Well the last thing I tried was to change from Hyper-V virtualization host to KVM/Linux. This was for hosting Win 7/2008 VMs. Unfortunately one of the things I needed to work was audio recording from the microphone. After much experimentation I eventually discovered that this simply does not work when hosting Win 7 VMs under KVM. Regardless of whether VNC or Spice is used to connect, it simply will not work.

Still not really related to the current question but you did ask.

Rgds,
Nick