More than OpenFiler

| 8 Comments
I've received better requirements than I had before, and OpenFiler by itself doesn't meet them. The requirements are, roughly:
  • Must support both file-based and block-based storage serving.
  • Must have some kind of non-hierarchical backup capability.
  • Able to create a mirror copy of the storage in a remote location.
This distills down to:
  • Must support both iSCSI and SMB serving.
  • Must have snapshots, or some other copy-on-write technology.
  • DRBD or some other replication technology.
Since OpenFiler's SMB integration just doesn't work in our environment, I can't use just that. Also, Samba's annoying habit of requiring a smb-daemon reset to add shares makes it annoying to work with. We can't risk pissing off the Access database users (not to mention PST users) who'd be most peeved when they have to do DB recovery on their files after a reset. Nothing a little change-management can't fix, but our users are already used to instant gratification.

Another option, less free, is to use a combination of Windows Server 2008 and KernSafe iStorage. It has the features we need, and the entire environment is still cheaper per GB than the other storage options we already have.

A second potential is the combination of OpenFiler in pure iSCSI mode and then a Windows Server 2008 instance in the ESX cluster to front-end iSCSI storage for SMB sharing. This has its problems as well, as filers are memory hungry, and we're currently bandwidth-constrained in the ESX cluster right now (this is changing, but we're still a month or two out from fixing that). Once you amortize utilized resources for this ESX-based filer you get a price that's pretty close to the KernSafe/Windows combo if not a bit more expensive.

I'm open to other ideas, but in the mean time KernSafe's free option has enough of the right features that I can at least test the thing.

8 Comments

Have you looked into OpenSolaris based storage solutions? With ZFS you get integrated iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS, no restarts necessary to add/remove shares, flexible lightweight snapshots, asynchronous remote replication, and really just about all other features you would get with a Netapp or EMC class solution.

I second the opensolaris approach. We use nexenta (http://www.nexenta.com) on standard hardware, and its been great over the past two years. We built one system ourselves and bought one fully configured from PogoLinux, I highly recommend the pogolinux route.

Nexenta was already mentioned, another solution is open-e. We use it on JollyStor from rekonix. Its based on linux platform so it has lvm and drbd inside.

surprised you're not checking into zenoss

http://community.zenoss.org/docs/DOC-5867

no email link on your blog

im also replacing a worn out 20 user netware 6.5 server.
im thinking centos but.....the jury is still out

Hi! On Windows we use StarWind iSCSI target. It's completely free for up to 2TB node configuration and allows to run clusters unlike others. Just my $0.02 :)

-ichiro

HI,

I am using kernsafe istorage with windows server 2k8 R2 for Storage HA setup.

As per my Experience and after PoC of Kernsafe iStorage, it's much more better than Openfiler DRBD.
The most important things it's very user friendly and easy to fix any Bug/Troubleshoot compare to Openfiler.

It's not a Free.