Cheap network storage?

March 6, 2005 10:35 PM

I have a small network with a couple of Dell servers (6300, 2450, 2650), all loaded up with 18.2GB SCSI drives in RAID5 configs. I need more space but the cost to u/g the SCSI drives is pretty steep. Is there a cheaper way to gain great gobs of storage space on the cheap?

I looked at the Dell Powervault series on eBay, but that's not cheap. I'm hoping for 500GB to 1TB of storage for < $1/GB. All the NAS devices I've seen aren't anywhere near meeting that criteria.

Is the MTBF difference that great between SCSI and SATA? It doesn't have to be blazing fast or extremely fault-tolerant, just workable. I'd keep the mission critical stuff on the SCSI drives and toss the 'replacable' data onto the less reliable system.

Thx!!

posted by Lactoso to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Get a bunch of cheap IDE drives, toss them into a Linux server and create a massive logical volume using LVM. You can use certain types of RAID with an LVM, as well.
posted by cmonkey at 10:49 PM on March 6, 2005

Second the IDE suggestion. You can mirror two sets of two 250 GB drives, then stick the two mirrored sets together with cmonkey's LVM. That gives you a 500 GB RAID 1+0 setup for about $640 — a little bit over your $1/GB budget, but pretty close.
posted by AlexReynolds at 10:55 PM on March 6, 2005

This might give you some ideas (being basically a more detailed version of the "slap some IDE drives into a linux box" theme). It's more than $1/gig, but then it's oldish.
posted by pompomtom at 11:05 PM on March 6, 2005

You can get an SATA IDE controller and put SATA drives into the DELL server. Or as the other suggest, you can do it in another server.
posted by stovenator at 11:08 PM on March 6, 2005

If you want really cheap, buy a couple of external drives and plug them into this ($80). About $0.50/GB.
posted by blag at 12:35 AM on March 7, 2005

I was gonna say ... IDE? Pah! PATA is oldskool.

SATA drives are just as cheap as IDE drives, come in sizes that are just as big, and have the transfer rates of SCSI. The drive construction isn't -quite- as robust, but that's why you're running RAID.

Now, as far as how to configure it... you can get 7200 RPM 250 GB SATA drives for as low as $130. Get a PCI SATA adapter and slip it into any one of your servers, a hotswap enclosure ('cuz you know a drive's eventually going to die, and I don't think you can get SATA hot-swap bays for servers without massive retrofitting and all-new hardware)

In fact, order it through these guys (no affiliation) ... and you'll get the external enclosure and hot swap bays and hard drives for $1097, add the Sonnet Temp 4x4 card for $199, and you get 750GB of hot-swappable storage for $1.7 per GB. (750GB is far more cost effective, albiet more expensive, than 500GB ... 500GB is $2.32/GB.) For 750 GB, it's pretty well below the industry standard of $1/GB non-redundant, $2/GB redundant that I was taught in MIS school.

If you can afford to someday need to take the SAN down so that you can replace a failed hard drive, you can do it much more cheaply. $592 will get you three 250GB SATA drives and that 4/4 PCI adapter... and that's just steenking cheap.

Note: Do think about putting the SAN on a 2nd subnet. Extra NICs and switches are cheap. Before I did that, a large file read off of my SAN, which is a 9 disk 18.2gb for 145GB extra enclosure for one of my IBM netfinity servers, would almost kill throughput for everything else on the network.
posted by SpecialK at 12:38 AM on March 7, 2005

Cheaper 4-bay enclosure on eBay, which can be mounted internally if one of your servers has a large enough bay free. There's a 3 in 2 from the same seller if you want to go that route.
posted by SpecialK at 12:44 AM on March 7, 2005

(OT but...) Check the tags on this guy! No one will ever find it.
posted by kenko at 7:27 AM on March 7, 2005

Kenko - Yeah, I had a brain fart when entering the tags. Any way to edit them?

SpecialK - Great stuff and thanks for the links. Heavily leaning towards your solution.

Everyone else - Thanks for the suggestions! It's great to have so many options now!

-Ed T.
posted by Lactoso at 8:16 AM on March 7, 2005

What is the performance difference for SATA versus SCSI?
posted by DeeJayK at 11:08 AM on November 9, 2005