Does ZFS Obsolete Expensive NAS/SANs?

hoggoth writes "As a common everyman who needs big, fast, reliable storage without a big budget, I have been following a number of emerging technologies and I think they have finally become usable in combination. Specifically, it appears to me that I can put together the little brother of a $50,000 NAS/SAN solution for under $3,000. Storage experts: please tell me why this is or isn't feasible." Read on for the details of this cheap storage solution.

Get a CoolerMaster Stacker enclosure like this one (just the hardware not the software) that can hold up to 12 SATA drives. Install OpenSolaris and create ZFS pools with RAID-Z for redundancy. Export some pools with Samba for use as a NAS. Export some pools with iSCSI for use as a SAN. Run it over Gigabit Ethernet. Fast, secure, reliable, easy to administer, and cheap. Usable from Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a bonus ZFS let's me create daily or hourly snapshots at almost no cost in disk space or time.

Total cost: 1.4 Terabytes: $2,000. 7.7 Terabytes: $4,200 (Just the cost of the enclosure and the drives). That's an order of magnitude less expensive than other solutions.

Add redundant power supplies, NIC cards, SATA cards, etc as your needs require.

Comments

Specifics please.

[PowerEdge]

Not enough specifics here. I am going to say do your thing. If it works, you're a hero and saved 47k. If it doesn't obfuscate and negotiate the 50k of storage down to 47k. Win for all.

Unless you would like to give more specifics. Cause I am going to say in 99% of cases where you want fast, reliable, and cheap storage you only get to pick two.

Re:Specifics please.

[Ngarrang]

Unless you would like to give more specifics. Cause I am going to say in 99% of cases where you want fast, reliable, and cheap storage you only get to pick two.

I disagree completely. Computer hardware is a commodity. The big box makers are afraid of this very kind of configuration which would blow them out of business if more people caught on to it. No, they use FUD to convince PHBs that because of the low cost, it cannot possibly be as good. Hot-swap and hot-spare are commodity technologies. But, please, feel free to continue the FUD, because it helps the bottom line.

Re:Specifics please.

[Score Whore]

No kidding. Without specific details there is no way to answer whether this is a good solution to his particular situation. However, even in the absence of details I can say this:

1) That case has twelve spindles. You aren't going to get the same performance from a dozen drives as you get from an hundred.

2) That system includes a small Celeron D processor with 512 MB RAM. You aren't going to get the same performance as you'll get from multiple dedicated RAID controllers with twenty+ gig of dedicated disk cache.

3) Your single gigabit ethernet interface won't even come close to the performance of the three or four (or ten) 2 gigabit fibre channel adapters involved in most SAN arrays.

4) Software iscsi initiators and targets aren't a replacement for dedicated adapters.

5) The Hitachi array at work never goes down. Ever. Not for expansions. Not for drive replacements. Not for relayouts. The reliability of a PC and the opportunity to do online maintenance won't approach that of a real array.

Don't get me wrong. That case makes me all tingly inside -- for personal use. But as a SAN replacement, fuck no. It's not the same thing. The original question just shows ignorance of what SANs are and the roles they fill in the data center.

As a workgroup storage solution for a handful of end users on their desktops, that solution probably may be a good fit. As a storage solution for ten (or two hundred) business critical server systems, no way.