NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
Grant Peel
gpeel at thenetnow.com
Wed Jul 22 00:42:16 UTC 2009
Chris,
Again, thanks for the info.
I only have one server with a PERC (raid) card installed, and I beleive it
is an older PERC 3 DCI, and doubt it would do the job. I would not be able
to add more PERC cards to the other machines.
I am looking to have the connections all done via Ethernet. Again, the
connections would be local (device to my switch, switch to the individual
servers).
Does this mean I should be considering iSCSI, or, since the connections will
all be on a local network, that I can continue to consider NFS?
Any takers?
-Grant
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher J. Umina" <chris.umina at studsvikscandpower.com>
To: "Grant Peel" <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
Cc: <questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
> Grant,
>
> DAS = Direct-Attached Storage, sorry to be confusing.
>
> I cannot personally speak to the performance of FreeBSD's NFS, but I
> wouldn't expect it to be the bottleneck in the situation described. Maybe
> others with more experience could chime in on this topic.
>
> The way to use a DAS is to connect the DAS to a server with an external
> SAS cable (or two). The PERC6/E controller you would need inside the
> server is very well supported in FreeBSD. The DAS system would basically
> act the same as internal disks would act (in the case of the MD1000). Of
> course you'll want to check with Dell before you make any purchases to be
> positive that your hardware will all communicate nicely, as I'm no Dell
> salesperson.
>
> Depending on how large of an array you plan to make (if larger than 2TB)
> you may have to investigate gpart/gpt to partition correctly, but that's
> quite simple in my experience.
>
> Chris
>
> Grant Peel wrote:
>> Chris,
>>
>> Thanks for the insight!
>>
>> I will defineately investigate that DAS ... although I am not (yet) sure
>> what the acronym means, I am sure it is something akin to "Direct Access
>> SCSI".
>>
>> You are quite right, I would like to use NFS to connect the device to the
>> 6 servers I have, again, it would be only hosting the /home partition for
>> each of them. Do you know if there would be any NFS I/O slowdowns using
>> it in that fassion? Would freebsd support (on the storage device) that
>> many connections?
>>
>> Also, do the Dell DAS machines run with FreeBSD?
>>
>> Also, from you you explained, I doubt I really need the versatility of
>> the SAN at this point, or in the near future. I simply want a mass /home
>> storage unit.
>>
>> -Grant
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher J. Umina"
>> <chris.umina at studsvikscandpower.com>
>> To: "Grant Peel" <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
>> Cc: <questions at freebsd.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 5:43 PM
>> Subject: Re: NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
>>
>>
>>> Grant,
>>>
>>> I mean to say that often times external SCSI solutions (direct attached)
>>> are cheaper and perform better (in terms of I/O) than iSCSI SANs.
>>> Especially if you're using many disks. SANs are generally chosen for
>>> the ability to be split into LUNs for different servers. Think of it as
>>> a disk which you can partition and serve out to servers on a
>>> per-partition basis, over Ethernet. That's essentially what an iSCSI
>>> SAN does. While DAS systems allow the same sort of configuration, they
>>> don't serve out over Ethernet, only SCSI/SAS.
>>>
>>> Since you plan to use NFS to share the files to the other servers, I
>>> think it may make more sense for you to use a SCSI solution if yo don't
>>> need the versatility of a SAN.
>>>
>>> Of course I know nothing of how you plan to expand this system, but from
>>> what I understand, with Dell DAS hardware it is possible to connect up
>>> to 4 different servers to the DAS and expand to up to 6 15 disk
>>> enclosures. The MD3000i (iSCSI) expands only to 3.
>>>
>>> Another issue is that without compiling in special versions of the iSCSI
>>> initiator, even in 8.0-BETA2 (which is not production-ready), iSCSI
>>> performance and reliability are terrible. There are other versions of
>>> the code (which I currently use) for the iscsi_initiator kernel module,
>>> but unless you're comfortable doing that, you may consider DAS in terms
>>> of ease of implementation and maintenance as well.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> Grant Peel wrote:
>>>> Chris,
>>>>
>>>> I don't know what a direct attached array is.....
>>>>
>>>> What I was just thinking was move all of the servers /home directory to
>>>> a huge NFS mount.
>>>>
>>>> If you have the time to elaborate fursther, I would apprciate it...
>>>>
>>>> This iSCSI think has me entrigued, but I must admit I know little about
>>>> it at this point.
>>>>
>>>> -Grant
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher J. Umina"
>>>> <chris.umina at studsvik.com>
>>>> To: "Grant Peel" <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
>>>> Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 11:27 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Grant,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have to ask, is there a reason you're intent on going with a SAN
>>>>> versus a direct-attached array?
>>>>>
>>>>> Chris
>>>>>
>>>>> Grant Peel wrote:
>>>>>> Thanks for the reply.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have not used/investigated the iSCSI thing yet....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The original question is can I just use an NFS mount to the storage's
>>>>>> /home partition?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Grant
>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: mojo fms To: Grant Peel Cc:
>>>>>> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 4:21 PM
>>>>>> Subject: Re: NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You would be better off at least having the SAN on 1gb ethernet or
>>>>>> even better tripple 1gb (on a 100mb switch should be fine but you
>>>>>> need failover for higher avaliability) ethernet for latency and
>>>>>> failover reasons with a hot backup on the network controller. I dont
>>>>>> see why you could not do this, its just iscsi connection normally so
>>>>>> there is not a big issue getting freebsd to connect to it. We run 2
>>>>>> of the 16tb powervault which does pretty well for storage, one runs
>>>>>> everything and the other is a replicated offsite backup. Performance
>>>>>> wise, it really depends on how many servers you have pulling data
>>>>>> from the SAN and how hard the IO works on the current servers. If
>>>>>> you have 100 servers you might push the IO a bit but but it should be
>>>>>> fine if your not serving more than 2Mb/s out to everyone, the servers
>>>>>> and disks are going to cache a fair amount of always used data.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I am assuming by the lack of response, my question to too long
>>>>>> winded, let me re-phrase:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What kind of performance might I expect if I load FreeBSD 7.2 on
>>>>>> a 24 disk, Dell PowerVault when its only mission is to serve as a
>>>>>> local area storage unit (/home). Obviously, to store all users /home
>>>>>> data. Throug an NFS connection via fast (100m/b) ethernet. Each
>>>>>> connecting server (6) contain about 200 domains?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Grant
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Grant Peel"
>>>>>> <gpeel at thenetnow.com>
>>>>>> To: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 10:35 AM
>>>>>> Subject: NFS- SAN - FreeBSD
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Up to this point, all of our servers are standalone, i.e. all
>>>>>> services and software required are installed on each local server.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Apache, Exim, vm-pop3d, Mysql, etc etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Each local server is connected to the Inet via a VLAN (WAN), to
>>>>>> our colo's switch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Each server contains about 300 domains, each domain has its own
>>>>>> IP.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Each sever is also connected to a VLAN (LAN) via the same (Dell
>>>>>> 48 Port managed switch).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We have been considering consolidating all users data from each
>>>>>> server to a central (local), storage unit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While I do have active nfs's running (for backups etc), on the
>>>>>> LAN only, I have never attempted to create 1 mass storage unit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So I suppose the questions are:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) Is there any specific hardware that anyone might reccommend?
>>>>>> I want to stick with FreeBSD as the OS as I am quite comfortable
>>>>>> admining it,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2) Would anyone reccomend NOT using FreeBSD? Why?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3) Assuming I am using FreeBSD as the storage systems OS, could
>>>>>> NFS simply be used?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4) Considering out whole Inet traffic runs about 2 Mb/s, is
>>>>>> there any reason the port to the Storage unit should be more than 100
>>>>>> M/b (would it be imparative to use 1 G/b transfer)?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> TIA,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Grant
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -- Who knew
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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