Openfiler anyone?

[randomlinh]

Not sure if I should post this here or periphs.. heh.. it's an OS.. but for a NAS box.

Anyway, trying to get some opinions on this. Basically trying to create a media box/file server. Ideally, it'd be hardware raid5 w/ a remote backup somewhere.. heh but that won't happen.

So the goal right now will be software raid 5, either via a hacked xp or openfiler (or another suggestion). Openfiler is based off CentOS, so I'd assume getting a couple of SATA controllers working shouldn't be a problem so long as it has some linux drivers.

What about expandability? Is it possible to grow an openfiler raid-5 array w/o destroying the data? Ideally, I'd have a backup, but in the senario where I have 500GB's to backup... it's going to cost money (in theory, it'd be cheaper by that time, but we'll leave that out).

Also, what about performance? I know it will be slow, but will read performance be enough to stream video off?

Thanks

 

[Brazen]

It's free, why not try it and let us know. As long as it uses LVM for the partitioning, the volumes should be expandable later; and I would bet my left nut that performance will be better than using Windows as a file server.

 

[thesix]

randomlinh:
Is it possible to grow an openfiler raid-5 array w/o destroying the data?

Brazen:
As long as it uses LVM for the partitioning, the volumes should be expandable later;

[/quote]

I don't think you can easily expand a RAID-5 volume.
You might be able to _replace_ one disk at a time with a larger disk, but you cannot _add_ more disks to the existing volume.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Brazen
It's free, why not try it and let us know. As long as it uses LVM for the partitioning, the volumes should be expandable later; and I would bet my left nut that performance will be better than using Windows as a file server.

well, the point is to get some input so i know i won't be wasting my time with it. but i'll most likely give it a shot this weekend.

 

[Brazen]

You might try finding it on freshmeat and comparing it to other NAS distros, check out its rating and popularity and such. IIRC, there is another popular one called OpenNAS?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: thesix

randomlinh:
Is it possible to grow an openfiler raid-5 array w/o destroying the data?

Brazen:
As long as it uses LVM for the partitioning, the volumes should be expandable later;

I don't think you can easily expand a RAID-5 volume.
You might be able to _replace_ one disk at a time with a larger disk, but you cannot _add_ more disks to the existing volume.[/quote]

not easily is probably right, but I was thinking (not positive, I'll admit) that LVM allows you to add disks.

 

[thesix]

not easily is probably right, but I was thinking (not positive, I'll admit) that LVM allows you to add disks.

You can add disks to a volume group ( I am using AIX's LVM term, don't know if Linux's LVM uses similar term ), which is a group of physical volumes, but you can not make the new disk a member of the existing RAID-5.