This post is a continuation of the previous post on cheap, reliable, manageable storage.

How do you create a volume across multiple drives that makes use of distributed parity (see previous post) without shelling out big money for an enterprise storage system? Windows XP Pro have built-in software RAID 5 support, which which will do nicely. Mac OS X Leopard will have ZFS, which will to really nicely, creating a RAID Z storage pool.

As noted previously, the sweet spot for drives right now is 500 GB drives, and we’ll need five of them for our array, to get 2 TB of storage. The first step is an eSATA enclosure to stick them in. The Sonnet Fusion 500P is exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for. You can pick one of these up for around $440 (here’s one place). That, plus the $700 for drives we’ve figured, brings us to $1140. Add an eSATA card that’s compatible with your system for under $100, for a total of $1240. That’s about the entire outlay required for this system. That, plus the built-in operating features mentioned above, will get you high-performance, fault tolerant RAID for a little less money than buying a bunch of FW 800 drives.

What do you get with a real enterprise storage system (say, an Xserve RAID) that you don’t get with this? Well, you do get a few things. You get remote management tools, redundant power supplies, and battery backup for your RAID controller. Remote management you don’t really need for something that’s going to be attached to your workstation. Redundant power supplies are primarily useful if you need something close to perfect uptime, which is more relevant to server applications (if you’re editing a low-budget feature, you can probably afford to lose a day if the power supply in your enclosure dies and you have to get another one), and for battery backup… buy a UPS; you should have one anyway.

Real enterprise RAID would also get you hardware RAID support, which lowers CPU overhead. This used to be a big deal, when processor power was a scarce resource. But on today’s four (and soon eight) core systems, this is not the issue it once was. And in the case of ZFS in Leopard, you’ll be getting far more flexibility and far more data integrity features from the software-based solution than you could get from any hardware RAID 5 controller.

Anyone can put together a system like this, incidentally. Even if you’ve never installed something in a computer in your life. SATA drives are self-configuring. Unlike their predecessors, they don’t have dip switches, master/slave modes, etc., so it’s really just a matter of plugging and going. I’ll be posting a full walkthrough (with photos and screencasts) of how to set up the hardware and get everything working with OS X around the time our RED #404 arrives.

Of course, you still have to back all of this up. See my previous post on that subject.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 11:35 AM and is filed under Software, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.