20TB Storage System

[Max Clark]

Hi all,

I need to attach 20TB of storage to a network (as low cost as possible), I
need to sustain 250Mbit/s or 30MByte/s of sustained IO from the storage to
the disk.

I have found external Fibre Channel -> ATA 133 Raid enclosures. These
enclosures will house 16 drives so with 250GB drives a total of 3.5TB each
after a RAID 5 format. These enclosures have advertised sustained IO of
90-100MByte/s each.

One solution we are thinking about is to use a Intel XEON server with 3x FC
HBA controller cards in the server each attached to a separate storage
enclosure. In any event we would be required to use ccd or vinum to stripe
multiple storage enclosures together to form one logical volume.

I can partition this system into two separate 10TB storage pools.

Given the above:
1) What would my expected IO be using vinum to stripe the storage enclosures
detailed above?
2) What is the maximum size of a filesystem that I can present to the host
OS using vinum/ccd? Am I limited anywhere that I am not aware of?
3) Could I put all 20TB on one system, or will I need two to sustain the IO
required?
4) If you were building this system how would you do it? (The installed $/GB
must be below $5.00 dollars).

My other options are to use Solaris or Windows (which I would rather not
do).

Thanks in advance,
Max