Re: OTT: OpenFiler vs Thecus N4200?
On 8/5/10 11:18 PM, Phillipus Gunawan wrote:
> Hi There,
>
> Sorry if this is a bit 'Off The Topic' discussion. I am planning to get
> fileserver dedicated for iSCSI.
>
> My option is to grab Thecus N4200 or to build OpenFiler with any Duo-Core CPU,
>> 1G RAM, RocketRAID 644 controller, and other basic PC stuff.
>
> I have been googling to compare OpenFiler vs FreeNAS (winner for me: OpenFiler)
> and cheap iSCSI capable barebone NAS from Thecus vs QNAP (winner: Thecus N4200)
>
> When it come to comparing between OpenFiler vs Thecus N4200, I can not get any
> goodies from google. I used OpenFiler for a bit, creating 2 or 3 iSCSI target,
> share folder, but only for short time, just for a fun.
>
> My concern:
> - HDD realibility check (live error check, reporting when one of the HDD
> faulty/bad sector/etc)
> - RAID/iSCSI re-sizing when I add another HDD
> - Easy to maintain
>
> So, if anyone expert can give me a light, would be much appreciated. For a
> started, I will only go with 3x2TB HDD for either option, to be RAID-ed as RAID5
Have you looked at NexentaStore? Free community addition is good for up
to 12 TB. It's based on OpenSolaris, not Linux, but it uses apt-get for
packages and upgrades.
CIFS: Check
NFS: Check
iSCSI: Check
ZFS: Check
ZFS at this time isn't all that good at dynamic resizing, but I believe
Sun/Oracle is working on that functionality.
I looked at FreeNAS myself, but the ZFS level it supports is very
experimental. OpenFiler, while I like the idea behind it, is based on
CentOS (which is a clone of that bloated thing called RedHat. Ugg).
Not to start a flame war or argument, but I'd skip the hardware RAID
card and go software. Most CPU's available have plenty of power to
handle the calculations needed for RAID. Also, you are not locked into
a single vendor, nor do you have to worry about replacement when the
RAID card dies (and it will eventually).
I'm running three VM's from an ESXi 4 machine using the NexentaStore on
an iSCSI datastore before moving my production VM's over to it, and so
far, I'm liking what I see overall. It seems to be a bit on the hungry
side, like OpenFiler would be, but it's quite usable with the 4 gigs and
the C2D 7500 CPU I have in it.
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