File server

[pll at lanminds.com]

In a message dated: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 14:29:49 EDT
"Andrew W. Gaunt" said:

>I'm in the very preliminary stages of looking into the
>possibilty of replacing a proprietary file server we have
>that is rather expensive and difficult to work with.

Are you replacing a NAS system?

>Without going into too much detail, its replacement must
>be able to deliver data via NFS and SMB. Samba is just fine
>for the latter. Also, it must be maintainable (no proprietary
>secrets that only the vendor's wizards know and can't reveal),
>reliable, scalable, blah blah.. Something in the Terabyte size
>for starters. It will need to serve hundreds of Solaris/Windows
>clients with the occasional linux box (they are growing in
>number, however).
>
>
>Any suggestions as to what projects or vendors I might read up on?

Well, on the hardware side of things, unless you're against it, a NAS 
server will fit this bill.  There is OpenNAS, advertised in Linux 
Journal, which I know nothing about.  I've used NetApp in the past 
and been pretty happy with.

If you want to avoid a NAS scenario, then I'd recommend a Sun/Solaris
server directly connected to the storage.  The Linux NFS server 
is still immature and can be quite slow and problematic in large 
environments.  Sun's server will offer you (in theory) the least 
amount of problems when connecting via a Sun client.

Additionally, the Linux automounter is lacking some features found in 
other commercial servers, such as direct map support.  This may or 
may not be an issue for you.  If you don't use the automounter, then 
you won't care :)  

HTH,
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
--
	It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!