Re: settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

["nate" <centos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rudi Ahlers wrote:

> I think my action plan now will be to figure out how to install CentOS
> on a USB memory stick and make it boot on any machine (making it easy to
> replace if need be), and then to play around with the RAID a bit and see
> how well it works.

Another option you may want to consider is a PATA->CF adapter. I use
these for my OpenBSD firewalls and have them installed on 1GB CF cards.
Performance should be better? Compatibility certainly is better, there's
no way I could boot to USB off these aging P3-800 systems. The CF cards
just show up as regular HDs

I use these ($7):
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SY-ADIDE2CF-B1&cpc=SCH

Paired with Lexar CF cards. Not all CF is created equal, well maybe it is
today. I found my Lexar CF cards were 5-10x faster than my Kingston cards
of the same size, which surprised me. Not that I need high performance in
firewalls that do no disk I/O but it was painful for the OS install to
take hours(Kingston) instead of minutes(Lexar). Both pairs of CF cards
are a few years old, today maybe everything out there is reasonably
fast.

At least with the above adapters be aware that those adapters above
do stick up. I think a 2U chassis can fit them(I have tons of experience
in supermicro systems). But no guarantees. You may need another adapter
or perhaps a male to female IDE cable so that you can mount it another
way in the chassis.

I suppose you could even get two and run RAID.

Just don't put your swap on the flash if you can avoid it.

nate


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