iSCSI storage for store backups

[charlie]

Hi,

We have an old Promise Vtrak M500i storage, what going to fail.

Now i looking something to replace it. Unfornatelly i not really find an used M500i in EU. I found M310i, but it have only 12 bay, and as i see i can not attach enclusore to it.

However, i found some good model, HP MSA2012i (this is a 12 bay stuff also, but it can be expanded via sas), or Dell EqualLogic PS5000E, PS3000X . Both are 16 bays model.

Any recommendations?

 

[gea]

Look for a a SuperMicro system ex http://napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-it_build_examples.pdf
and place a Solarish based ZFS operating system with Comstar on it (Comstar is a enterprise ready iSCSI framework)
COMSTAR and iSCSI Technology (Overview) - Oracle Solaris Administration: Devices and File Systems

Such a open storage system avoids a lock to a hardware vendor or a software environment.

Oracle Solaris is the fastest and most feature rich ZFS system (ZFS=best of all data security) but its not free.
Free Opensource production ready options are available around the free Solaris fork Illumos/OmniOS
OmniOS Community Edition (even with a commercial support option)

If you wand a webbased management option, you can look at my napp-it, a storage management add-on for Solaris and OmniOS/OI, see napp-it // webbased ZFS NAS/SAN appliance for OmniOS, OpenIndiana, Solaris and Linux : Manual

 

[charlie]

I don't want sw based solution for this porpuse. Simple, cheap storage, to store backup. For everyting else, there are the CEPH cluster.

 

[Flintstone]

Software based? So you feel like the HP units don’t have software?

It takes about 15 minutes to get OmniOS/napp-it on a generic server up and running with iSCSI, SMB and NFS. Give it two disks parity and it will run for years without maintenance...

 

[charlie]

Ok, so, i don't want normal server with Linux or BSD or Windows based. Its clear?

 

[Evan]

Unless your paying a support agreement then an OS you can update would be preferred to an appliance that is just an OS that you can’t update ?
If you don’t care about support or updates I would take the HP options you have already seen.

 

[charlie]

I also pay for the OS (Red Hat), so its doesnt matter where i pay. I prefer hw based solutions, because its redundant controller, cheap and basically not need to maintenance (after configured). This solution need to store backups, not a critical system. You can see, promise vtrak stuff was a 10 year old storage.

 

[gea]

If you do not care about security flaws there is no need for maintenance for any soution (beside a hardware/disk failure). The "firmware" of a prebuild storage solution is mostly a small Linux with webmanagement so there are security problems within without updating them regualarly what you can't even if you want.

If you use a regular enterprise OS instead, webmanaged and optimized to a storage use case, you must not update either but you can. You are also not locked in to a hardware or software environment and you can use or even add newer storage features when they become available like different services like FC/iSCSI, NFS and SMB, the ultimate datasecurity of ZFS, encryption, deduplication, compression, high performance backup via ZFS replication that covers open files, pool scrubbing that repairs silent data errors even on open files and much more..

I would not say using a 10 years old system without update option is a feature, this is a security flaw and a freeze of old technology instead of an ongoing state of the art option.

 

[charlie]

But i don't care about these features. I want to store only my backups. I not need deduplication, compression high performance or anything. Our main cluster is a CEPH cluster, what can do these things. I simply want to stora somewehere our backups. Thats all.

But, keep it on this zfs stuff. Please advise me, how can i build it for less than a 1000 EUR, because these iscsi box prices below that.

Because looks like you are a salesman who want to sell your products...

 

[Flintstone]

I do not think attacking Gea who is really respected here will get you anywhere, at least not after that 100% informative and correct comment. I for one would not like to be your customer, viewing the security of backups like that. And by end of May you better check if using that old tech is the way to go to safeguard the personal information in that dataset. A 10 year old distro embedded into a storage controller will have a lot of vulnerabilities.

 

[charlie]

I simply reqeuested and advise about cheap iscsi storage, and instead of that, i received, i need to use (buy) a thousand eurs system with zfs, and they software.

You don't know what we store on this backups, why you wrote totally irrelevant things? And i will you will never be our costumers, becase we don't need like you. Do it yourself, as you want.

 

[gea]

As Sun made ZFS Opensource ten years ago, you can use it on an OpenSource OS so you do not need to pay for software (beside extra services/support if you want).

So you need only hardware. But as you want 12bay+ this cannot be cheap unless you use garbage desktop/ cheap chinese quality parts. A professional 19" case with a good power supply is more than 1000 USD. A quality mainboard with some RAM is at least 600 USD.

In your case I would look for a used SuperMicro case. If it is only supporting 2TB disks you may need to replace the HBA but this can be done under 1000 USD and gives professional server quality.

btw
I maintain a Solarish ZFS storage solution for a commercial Oracle Solaris and the OpenSource Solaris forks OmniOS/OI and offer commercial support for it but you can use it basically for free without support beside community support like now and there are other ZFS solutions ex based on Free-BSD that come also in a free and commercial version like FreeNAS/IX.

 

[charlie]

Promise storage had 15 bays, 12 bay will not enough for me. If 12 wil lbe enough, its easy, becase there is a lot of HP server with 12 bay for low cost money.

 

[gea]

Propably you want something like Supermicro SC846 24x SATA Storage Server, 9650SE-24M8, SAS846A 6G Backplane | eBay

and replace the raidcontroller with LSI HBAs (IBM 1015, Dell H200 etc)

or replace the mainboard with a Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X10SDV-2C-7TP4F that comes with 16x SAS/Sata HBA onboard and 10G

 

[_alex]

You can just buy a NAS that supports iscsi and size the number of bays/HDD's as you need.
For sure not worse than your old solution.