[OpenAFS] Large Data Storage

[Steve Devine]

John Falk wrote:

>I'm looking for a solution that would provide large amounts of data
>storage and would be able to grow exponentially. I am a network
>administrator for a school, like most schools right now budgets are
>tight and our data storage needs are growing. I am looking to make a
>giant raid5 out of retired machines. I was looking at the open-afs
>project to create a network data storage cloud.  As machines are retired
>they would be added to the data storage cloud and all data would be
>split across several machines like raid5.  Is this or can this easily be
>implemented using open-afs?
>
>
>Johnathan Falk
>Network Administrator
>_______________________________________________
>OpenAFS-info mailing list
>OpenAFS-info@openafs.org
>https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
>  
>
In my opinion the best thing afs offers to anyone regardless of your 
data needs (sizewise) is the flexibility the system admin has over the 
data. With afs you can move a volume from server a to server b with one 
command. During this time the user is completely unaware. The user can 
read and write to the volume while the operation is in progress.
So if you need to reboot a server or otherwise take it off line you can 
empty the file server and then do with it what you will.  The quota of 
the volume can be increased or decreased as well.
I would suggest giving some thought to your data storage. It isn't much 
use to make a 30 gig volume if you cant move it to another server with 
30 gig space. So similar sized storage media are a good idea.
/sd

Steve Devine
Storage Systems
Academic Computing & Network Services
Michigan State University

506 Computer Center
East Lansing, MI 48824-1042
1-517-432-7327

Baseball is ninety percent mental; the other half is physical.
- Yogi Berra