Hi, I have a physical server with 15 sata HDD (750 GB each one).
I need to deploy a large file server (with Owncloud, Nextcloud, Seafile, or so).
I wondering what kind of raid software and/or file system could be better in my case.
Thank you

These days I would give consideration to ZFS. It's available on some distros. Though if you go that route, it might be better to base the server on FreeBSD or TrueOS (a FreeBSD distro)

Not really sure how to answer...too many variables you haven't told us to make an educated guess. We'd need to know:

• What kind of hardware/controller(s) these drives are plugged in to
• Do the controllers support hardware RAID, or are they 'fake RAID' controllers?
• How many users may be accessing this concurrently?
• How will they access it? For example, streaming live audio/video has different demands than a generic file server would, or that a database would require.
• What is the underlying NEED that you're meeting? If it's just storage without having to worry about a failed hard drive, that will push things differently than if you want to give 500 people 24/7 access where they're all pounding on it on a LAN.
• What kind of PC/system is going to drive this?
• Budget?

For example, if you have controllers that are 'real' RAID, you could do 5 RAID5 aray's, each one with an online hot spare, then join those into an LVM of one 'big disk', with a good amount of failover and capacity to grow. But again...too many unknowns to really say.

Hi TB0ne, at this moment I don't remeber the exact hardware/controller. I'll check tomorrow.
I don't know "how" people will access to this file server: I just know that the idea is to provide an easy "cloud" service (as I said, probably with Owncloud).
I think there will be max 100-200 people at time (I mean: on peak hours).
This serivce is meant for end customers, so I'd need a "reliable" solution.
Actually, the idea is to provide this without any further budget: I already have this hardware (with HDDs inside), anyway if it's worth it, I think I can afford about $1000.
Thank you

Fair enough, but the specs of the hardware may limit your speed, regardless of the file system. Also note, that if you set this up with RAID, you take a performance hit right there, albeit not one that's huge. If you're using Owncloud, that means they'll probably be accessing it via web interface, so your incoming WAN bandwidth will be a limiting factor, as will your web server and its configuration...
..and for 100-200 concurrent users, with no idea of how large the files will be they're shoveling up/down and with what frequency, especially over an Internet connection...I don't think that the file system is going to make much difference in this scenario. MANY layers between the user(s) and the data at that point, each with a bottleneck you can't overcome with faster IO on a bus.

If you were running a large database, then going with a native Oracle filesystem with tables on their own spindles makes a HUGE difference...but this probably won't see any benefits of that. Go for failover/robustness over speed.

ZFS and BSD might have a bit of a learning curve.
If you want something that "just works", have a look at LVM. Current version has support for RAID baked into LVM - no need to define dmadm RAID at all. Very flexible - it recognises pv's on separate devices, and will spread data and metadata appropriately. You can convert between RAID levels on the fly and it allows for failure policies so it can automatically rebuild if spares are present.
What more could you want ?.
I used to be a bit ambivalent re LVM, but this RAID support has convinced me it really is useful.

As for what RAID level, that is your decision - depends on what redundancy you need, and how much of that 10T you can afford to lose at setup.

I'll agree with most of the above, not enough metrics or data here to make a great reply.

I am making a huge assumption that this is a real server box.

Most true servers have dedicated hardware raid cards I'd think if this is a good enough system. Even older users servers have good hardware raid cards. I might be tempted to look at using it first over a software solution. I would not consider using any sort of FAKE raid cards.

ZFS, Btrfs and LVM are all common ways to manage JBOD's into either mass storage or raid configurations even if you have a hardware raid already. Some very advanced features in those filesystem/managers.

I'd also that that this server might have enterprise level nic and that could help lower cpu use.


No substitute for ram but making raid swap may assist.


There may be some advantages to running this or some processes in a VM also.

https://www.turnkeylinux.org/owncloud

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I simply don't have enough information, yet, upon which to base any sort of recommendation.

It is "uninteresting" that you will have 15 hard-drives attached. Is the data on these drives meant to be read/write, or is this some kind of passive store? What are the availability and reliability requirements? What, exactly, is this server supposed to be doing, and for whom? How will its intended users access it? What sort of things will they do?