Fast Common Network Storage

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rob
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Rob

I'm considering future storage options for a growing local digital
photography studio. The network would consist of three or four similarly
configured (cloned) workstation computers that would store thier own
operating sytem, program (Photoshop, ACDSee, Cumulus, POS, database etc..),
and configuration files, and a separate common storage device for all user
data (digital images, client database files etc...).
Now here are the criteria:
- Redundant, Failsafe
- Very high speed performance and network transfer ability (40 MB Image
files)
- Expandable storage space, ability to hot-plug hot-swap drives
- Ability to quickly handle reads/writes from multiple workstations
simultaneously
- Appears, and behaves like a normal hard drive or volume to the programs
(ie. F: or G:)

Any recommendations?
 
I'm considering future storage options for a growing local digital
photography studio. The network would consist of three or four
similarly configured (cloned) workstation computers that would store
thier own operating sytem, program (Photoshop, ACDSee, Cumulus, POS,
database etc..), and configuration files, and a separate common
storage device for all user data (digital images, client database
files etc...). Now here are the criteria:
- Redundant, Failsafe
- Very high speed performance and network transfer ability (40 MB
Image files)
- Expandable storage space, ability to hot-plug hot-swap drives
- Ability to quickly handle reads/writes from multiple workstations
simultaneously
- Appears, and behaves like a normal hard drive or volume to the
programs(ie. F: or G:)

Any recommendations?
Click to expand...

Windows 2000 Server, Novell, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and probably several
others that I have forgotten about will do what you want.

When you say "redundant, failsafe", are you talking about disks or are
you talking about the whole server? Any contemporary server operating
system provides native support for some variety of RAID, which gives you
redundant disks. If you need the server to failover you can do that but
with everything except the open-source Unix variants it's going to cost
you.

With properly configured storage devices and a server with 64 bit 66 MHz
PCI Novell can saturate a gigabit Ethernet. I believe that Linux can as
well. Last I heard, Windows 2000 couldn't, but that might have changed.
Any of them can saturate 100baseT. With gigabit the transfer time for
your 40 meg image should be under half a second--with 100baseT it should
be around 5 seconds. This assumes that you have a storage configuration
that can sustain that transfer rate.

When you say "expandable storage space" do you mean that you want to be
able to increase the size of a volume at any time without reformatting?
If so you're getting into high-end array controllers. Any decent RAID
controller these days supports hot-plug and hot-swap, however if you
intend to use IDE drives then you should consider SATA, which has this
capability built in. But from what you're describing I suspect you're
going to end up using SCSI.

The ability to handle simultaneous reads and writes from multiple
workstations is another storage configuration issue.

Any contemporary network operating system presents its volumes as
lettered drives on DOS and Windows boxen. That's a non-issue.
 
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