SAMBA storage. Would a cluster help.
 

Hi All
CentOS5
We have 3 Samba servers each with 6 x 1.5TB drives in Raid 5 with AD authentication. OS on 250GB drives in raid 1. The amount of data created by this company is horribly high and we are running out of disk space again. I predict that we will have problems in 5 or 6 months. I could easily add another server and distribute the projects across 4 servers but this becomes extremely confusing to the users. Is there some way to create a better infrastructure that would help tidy this up.

I have read about Clustering the servers giving a single IP, an ideal stituation for us. How would clustering use the storage, we also need to avoid a single point of failure.

I remember reading somewhere that Samba is not cluster aware, what does that actually mean?

What is cluster storage and would that help. Does that have a single point of failure??

How do the big boys like google look after the immense data they create, could we scale that idea down??

Thanks for taking time to read this.

Hi,

Clusters basicaly can be set up by two ways: active/passive and active/active.

Active/Passive means that one server works, and the others stay waiting the active one fails.

On Active/Active, both servers are up, running, and working like one.

Samba supports both of them. Active/Passive with many tools and ways, and Active/Active with CTDB.

But on your case, I suggest that: first, you buy a really big storage, that can be stacked. If you are looking for a HA, you must buy two storages, with redundant features.

Then, you install two servers, connected to the storages, with samba+ctdb. That you provides HA, one IP to user's access, possible to grow up with modularity.

Otherwise, the storage capacity of normal servers appears to be small to that case, and you will must split the data into all those servers: more data, more servers.

[]'s

Rafa
Linux, Linux and Linux! Suporte Linux

Hi Rafa. Thanks for replying

When you say buy BIG STORAGE. What exactly do you mean. Is this network connected or E-SATA ?? Are there some example products I could look at?? A Pointer here would start the project in the right direction.