NAS devices

[Jerry Feldman]

A while back we had a discussion on NAS devices. It appears that my 
office is expanding. Currently we are using a Linux system with non-RAID 
drives serving both NFS for our 9 Linux systems and a few directories 
exported via SAMBA. That Linux box is a SCSI box that is pretty well 
maxed out. We currently have over 800GB of data. For backup we are using 
a WD Mybook 2TB system which is adequate but very slow. What I am 
looking for is a rack mounted 1U or 2U dedicated system. All but 2 of 
the Linux systems are in the rack. We currently have a 24 port Netgear 
gigabit switch in the rack. For performance I could set up a NAS devices 
on a private network with its own switch connected to the second port of 
the existing servers.
What we probably will need is initially 2TB usable storage in the RAID1, 
5 or 6 configuration to replace the current Linux server.
One system that looks good is the Netgear ReadyNAS series.

I would prefer that the systems run Linux internally and support both 
NFS as well as Samba. As I mentioned above, performance is important. I 
don't think that I would need the private LAN option initially. I would 
probably use the higher speed SATA drives. At this point a SAN is 
probably too expensive.

I'm just looking for personal experience with NAS devices so when I make 
a recommendation, I will have some experiences.


-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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