[NCSA-discuss] RAID recommendations?

[Steve Wolfe]

thoughts:
1. I have heard good things about the 3ware cards. - not used one.
2. JBOD w/o hot-swap is tempting due to cheap .. and we do some of
that in the 2T range
3. Everything else starts spinning up price. (hot swap does seem nice)

Linux:
ext3 size limits: (seems right)
block size  filesize      filesystem size
1 KiB 	16 GiB 	2 TiB
2 KiB 	256 GiB 	8 TiB
4 KiB 	2 TiB 	16 TiB
8 KiB[limits 1] 	2 TiB 	32 TiB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3#Size_limits

ext4 size.. (needs more look)
Large file system
    The ext4 filesystem can support volumes with sizes up to 1 exabyte
and files with sizes up to 16 terabytes[8]. The current e2fsprogs can
only handle a filesystem of 16 TB,[9] but support for larger drives is
under development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3#Size_limits

Simon's suggestion looks interesting - and then maybe run sotware raid
and maybe LVM.
don't know if it will work w/ RAID - they might have something.

esp if the vendor is trustworthy and will give some suggestions.
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/c1153/storform-jbods.php

A few years ago we ran some software raid
and although not truly ideal .. not too bad.

Steve