Linux as a NAS performance questions

[Drew Van Zandt]

FYI, a friend of mine who's Our Sort (IT professional) has a Drobo at home,
and had a few things to say about it:
1) It rocks, especially lately when he's been experiencing regular
brownouts.
2) It's Linux underneath the shiny custom box, and not difficult to get ssh,
Perl, and userland NFS running.
3) It's as fast as he'd expect a modest home Linux system doing the same
thing to be.

--DTVZ

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net>wrote:

> Drew Van Zandt wrote:
> > That's basically what a Drobo
> > (http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php) is, only they already
> > considered all of those performance questions for you.
> >
> > --DTVZ
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Neil Joseph Schelly
> > <neil at jenandneil.com <mailto:neil at jenandneil.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     I'm looking to build a small Shuttle barebone machine into a NAS
> >     running
> >     Linux.  The intent of the machine is to be a networked PC with lots
> of
> >     storage in a RAID array, made available over the gigabit network
> >     interface
> >     via Samba, NFS, and maybe iSCSI protocols.  I'm curious what
> >     experience
> >     others have with this sort of stuff in general, but two immediate
> >     questions
> >     come to mind about processor and memory performance.
> >
> >     I can go the low-power, low-heat route and get a single-core
> >     processor and a
> >     single memory stick of minimal quantity.  Or I can upgrade a bit,
> >     get a
> >     dual-core processor with 2 sticks of dual-channel memory.  Or
> >     something in
> >     between.  What I don't know is how much impact processor speed,
> >     multiple
> >     cores, memory capacity, and dual-channel memory has on disk I/O,
> >     network I/O,
> >     software RAID processing, etc.
> >
> >     I like the idea of a small low-power, low-heat appliance, but will
> >     going too
> >     low on those negatively impact performance much?  The cost
> >     difference between
> >     a single-core processor with 1GB of memory and a dual-core
> >     processor with 2
> >     sticks of 1GB dual-channel memory is insignificant, so that's not
> >     much of a
> >     concern.
> >     -N
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     gnhlug-discuss mailing list
> >     gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org <mailto:
> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> >     http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
> >
> There seem to be a lot of unhappy Drobo users if Newegg's customer
> reviews are anything to go buy. Take a look here:
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822240010
>
> I have learned the hard way to be very mindful of the customer reviews
> on Newegg. If the unhappy customers get to the 20% or higher level you
> need to make sure their complaints don't apply to your situation.
>
> -Alex
>
>
>
>
>
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> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
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