Adding external storage

On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 19:28:51 -0500, Chris Cox wrote:

> How inexpensive?

As inexpensive as possible given a decent product, of course <grin>. My
upper bound is probably about $2500 + the cost of a SCSI card + the cost
of some SATA disks. That's what it would cost me to use the array I know
which makes 8 SATA drives available to a host via SCSI.

[...]
> I use a lot of these. They work fine.

I agree. This is defining my upper bound on cost. I'm looking to see if
I can find a cheaper solution since I really don't need the performance
these can provide.

[...]
> It's unique. Last time I look it was also pretty dog slow.

Oh. For the price, that's not good.

- Andrew

On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 18:17:59 -0400, Andrew Gideon <c182driver1.TakeThisOut@gideon.org> wrote:

>I've been looking, for example, at a RAID enclosure which would connect
>via USB. But those I've found seem to use IDE drives, which I find a
>little scary. Am I being overly paranoid? Any recommendations for
>USB-connected RAID arrays?

I find this a contradiction, you want reliable USB? Your have a
problem with network filesystems?

>Any suggestions?

SATA drives in a box on localnet, or dedicated NAT storage box,
forget USB, USB is for mice... I'd rather use proper networking
than some souped up keyboard/mouse protocol

Grant.
--
But Linux grew from humble and stupid roots.

Linus -- lkml 24 Apr 2006

On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:21:00 +1000, Grant wrote:

> I find this a contradiction, you want reliable USB?

I'd never thought of that: USB isn't reliable? Admittedly, my use of it
for storage has been limited so far. But I've never had a problem
attributable to USB itself (at least as far as I know {8^).

> Your have a problem
> with network filesystems?

Indirectly, yes. An absolute requirement for us is ACL support. SMB
provides this, but smbfs (at least as of Fedora Core 3) does not. NFSv3
or v4 can provide this, but few implementations actually do.

Obviously, I could build a NAS from a Linux box that would do what I want.
But in that case I'd simply use that box as a second backup server and
avoid the extra network traffic. This is an option, BTW, but I wanted to
explore the idea of simply adding storage to the existing server (since
storage space is the only limiting resource on that box).

Block level network storage (ie. iSCSI) isn't a problem, of course (which
is why I was considering Coraid and its AoE protocol).

If not USB, what other external storage protocols exist? I know about
SCSI, of course, and am considering that (as I wrote previously). Can
SATA be used externally? If so, any recommendations for external SATA
arrays and cards with external SATA ports (that are supported under Linux,
of course {8^)?

Thanks...

- Andrew

On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 10:44:54 -0400, Andrew Gideon <c182driver1.DeleteThis@gideon.org> wrote:


>On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 12:21:00 +1000, Grant wrote:

>> I find this a contradiction, you want reliable USB?

>I'd never thought of that: USB isn't reliable? Admittedly, my use of it
>for storage has been limited so far. But I've never had a problem
>attributable to USB itself (at least as far as I know {8^).

How well does usb-storage multitask? Can you have multiple activities
active at the same time? (ie: moving data, and another seek)