Help - Building a file system server that 7-8 unix systems can mount to?

[LordSnailz]

Our little research group is consolidating and the parent company is taking away all our engineering computing support. So that means we'll have to get our own server up and running.

I'm an EE guy and have no experience with unix administration stuff ... is there an recommended guides out for complete noobs on how to build a file system server that a few unix boxes can mount to pull and put files into?

Other than being able to mount, I guess backup is the next important thing. I was hoping I can hit frys, build a computer, raid it, install some OS and viola, done! But I know the devil is in the details ... so I'm hoping to get some tips here. TIA!

 

[Nothinman]

The fact that you didn't say which unix you're talking about is a bad sign. NFS is pretty simple to setup but if you've got no unix experience then you're probably in for a pretty rough ride. Especially since each type of unix has their own set of quirks. If they're all the same then you probably won't hit anything funky but it's hard to say for sure.

The main gotcha with NFS is that you need to keep all of your UIDs synchronized across servers so if you don't have kerberos, ldap, etc setup you'll have to manually verify them on each server when you create new users.

 

[Kakumba]

Completely agree with Nothinman, but also, are you needing all machines to read and write to the same data, or do you simply need a central storage server, and each machine will have its own piece of disk? That changes things. So, for now, we need some more detail, at least which OS things will be.