[NCLUG] Favorite NAS

[John L. Bass]

Roll your own isn't out of the question. A dozen 40GB fibre channel drives in
a couple drive tower cases, a hub and a couple FC HBA's has a lot of bandwidth.
If your application needs accesses more than bandwidth, build up the array
with 18GB drives instead. You can also use a FC raid controller backending
a scsi array - check out Compaq FC raid towers.

You might want to build out a dual processor Linux cluster to serve it - but stay
away from ext2 filesytems. Checkout GFS or one of the newer Log based filesystems.
A dual 800MZ PIII system has enough horsepower to serve a solid NFS system,
and more.

If Linux is too much of a reach for management, use X86 Solaris which is
a rock solid NFS server on most dual processors.

John

	Can anyone recommend their favorite Network Attached Storage unit?
	Up front I need 350 to 450 Gigabyte with extra bays for growth.
	Need connectivity support for IRIX, Linux, and Windows (SMB).
	I have found so many to choose from I though the experts here might
	have like one or the other better..

	This project does not require NAS and could go with external server
	attached..
	Would like to stay under $15,000

	Thanks,

	Stephen