[OpenAFS] Huge RW volume size questions...

[Rodney M. Dyer]

Hi,

We are working on a project to possibly provide much larger non-replicated 
data volumes than have been historically requested by our clients.  Our 
clients are now beginning to request multiple terabyte volumes.  Whether or 
not they know ahead of time if they will actually use all that space is 
another question altogether.  Recently, because we haven't been able to 
provide this level of storage, some of our clients have been storing data 
locally on USB connected devices.  This has placed us in a situation as AFS 
administrators that we would prefer not to be in.

We would like to know what others have done to provide this kind of 
storage.  I would assume that most have tried RAID, or JBOD type 
configurations.  We would like to know the following...

*  What vendor devices seem to work well with AFS?
*  Which type of configuration seems to work best with AFS?  RAID, JBOD?
*  What about the interface technology?  SCSI, fiber channel, etc
*  Are there any non-vendor home grown software solutions such as using 
Linux, etc?
*  What is your favorite backup strategy for data archival on volumes of 
this size?

Thanks much,

Rodney

Rodney M. Dyer
Operations and Systems (Specialist)
Mosaic Computing Group
William States Lee College of Engineering
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Web: http://www.coe.uncc.edu/~rmdyer
Phone: (704)687-3518
Help Desk Line: (704)687-3150
FAX: (704)687-2352
Office:  Cameron Hall, Room 232