From owner-freebsd-isp Sun Jan 16 22:35: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from misery.sdf.com (misery.sdf.com [204.244.213.49]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2F2014F56 for ; Sun, 16 Jan 2000 22:34:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tom@sdf.com) Received: from tom (helo=localhost) by misery.sdf.com with local-esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 12A5jd-0001gb-00; Sun, 16 Jan 2000 22:33:53 -0800 Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 22:33:47 -0800 (PST) From: Tom To: "N.B. DelMore" Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Shared File Systems In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000116235116.00a42210@mail.inr.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun, 16 Jan 2000, N.B. DelMore wrote: > I find myself in desperate need to impliment some sort of centralized file > system (RAID 5) that can be shared by multiple servers, eg. mail, web, > shell etc. > > To that end, we recently implemented a single 200 GB RAID array using > (forgive me) RH 6, and the DPT SmartRAID V controller (I waited for months > hoping that FreeBSD support for this controller would appear as promised by > DPT early last year). But we probably will convert this to FreeBSD as soon > as the drivers become available and are proven to be stable. > > Currently, its only being used as a mail spool; sendmail and cucipop > delivering mail to the users 'home' directory (hashed spools), but I would > really like to begin using it for other purposes as well, e.g. for some of > our web hosting services. > > However, I keep reading about how NFS is not the ideal manner in which to > impliment this due to a number of reasons. > > I'd appreciate some advice from my fellow ISP's. Am I on the right path or ? I think it is important to look at why you want to centralize your data storage. You say you are desparate to do it, but why? Answering that will go a long way. NFS can work. There is a price to pay though. Depending on the applications, there can be locking issues. Latency is always higher than local storage (client -> network -> server -> disk as opposed to client -> disk). Most ISPs that want centralized NFS, go for a NetApp, which has specialized hardware to accelerate performance. NetApp's also have nice features like online expansion of filesystems, and snapshots. You need to plan the clients and servers properly, connected with a good network. You mention your server, but not your client(s). Is your server a dedicated NFS server, or does it run other stuff? > Thanks > Noel > > > > > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message > > Tom To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message