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On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 12:23 PM, Per Jessen <per@computer.org> wrote:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
== details
I need to buy a server with 50TB usable disk for a production environment. A high speed disk subsystem is critical. And the project may scale up over time.
It doesn't need to be a fail-over cluster, just a single server. I'm looking at used equipment most likely.
I was thinking one with 4 CPU sockets would let me start with 2 CPUs and then expand to 4 later on. Lots of RAM capacity would also be great.
My first thought was to get a Dell R920 and throw a bunch of disks in it.
24 disk slots!
But then I looked at what size drives are available for those slots: 2.5 inch. I only see 2TB drives max.
Greg, for storage servers, we use some fairly plain Supermicro SC846 boxes with 24 x 3.5" slots. They were bought 2nd hand, I think we have 12 or 14, with some being used for spare parts. (power supplies), 8 currently in production.
Thanks, I was thinking of something along those lines. Alternatively a NetApp filer isn't too expensive used.
They were cheap, maybe 400-500chf a piece. They have server boards, with ipmi board etc., but not overly beefy. One quad-core CPU, 8Gb RAM. They're mainly used for serving disk to xen guests over iscsi.
Again, exactly what I was thinking. 10 Gbit/sec? 40 Gbit/sec? Is it even feasible to consider SAS HBAs as the interconnect from the main server to the storage server? Do we have kernel support for that on subsystem end? If SAS is an option, does it have significantly less overhead than iSCSI? (Seems like it would).
You might look for something like that and then upgrade with faster SATA, if needed. We have been experimenting with adding a large SSD cache (pcix) to each box, but I don't have any numbers yet.
I have a Windows box I put a 2TB PCIx SSD in as disk cache. It makes a huge difference.
Otherwise, in the 2nd hand area, EMC and Fujitsu both do some very nice storage arrays. IBM and HP too for that matter. Careful you get one with SATA, not fibre-channel disks. SATA is easier/cheaper to replace.
I'm very familiar with the HP line of 2005. Not so much anything newer.
HTH Per
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