Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

Personnaly, I would go with either http://www.freenas.org/ or
http://www.openfiler.com/ installed on a usb key and if possible on
recycled hardware. Both are open source solution to easily transform
computers into file servers.

Bare in mind that fileserver don't need a lot of cpu nor ram, so any 2-3
years old computer would do the job. Therefore limiting the cost to a
SATA controler or 2, a Gigabit network card  and the hard drives them
self. The other plus is, since they are linux or BSD they requires less
maintennance than windows based server solution (No risk of virus or
other malware and security update rarely requires to reboot the system)
and they can be installed on a small usb key freeing physical space for
an extra hard drives. Plus at the price they are (free, with optional
paid costumer support) you can easily do some test on an unused computer
before investing in any hardware without any risk.

At the same time I would also invest in a small Gigabit network only for
the acquisition station. For less than 100$ you will be insulated from
network bottleneck, like when alot of peaple are surfing youtube.
Beside, most university network are still 100Mps anyway.

As for backup, talk to your IT department, they may already have
solutions for that. If it is not the case, remember that RAID is not
considered a backup solution and that you probably want to place the
backup hardware in an other building. That way in the unlikely event
that there is a fire in your building your data will be safe (water and
smoke will damage any solution you will choose.

At Jens:
This is what we have here and I think it is a horrible solution. That
way there is no control. When I leave, after my Phd, I'm leaving with
the hardware I bought with my money, so I'm leaving with my data and who
knows when I will want to free the space. Also, I know That I'm the only
one who religiously backup, if one of my co-workers' hard drive dies,
the data dies with it. And once, I cough some one who saved their data
as colour merged jpeg to save space...

So yes it is a cheap solution, but at what cost?

At Shalin:
Linux based software RAID5 allow to expand arrays and logical volume
size on the fly. Though I do recommend unmounting the partition to be
expanded ( or shrunk) to avoid problems if someone wants to do IO during
the expansion (same thing applies for hardware raid). And, in my
opinion, putting the system partition on a raid 0,5 or 6 is looking for
trouble anyway.

Hardware raid has it's plus, but it also has a few draw back.

1 - The card are very expansive, be aware that a lot of SATA card and
cheap RAID card uses fake-raid (software raid with special driver) which
has all the inconvenient of software and hardware raid combined.

2 - If the hardware raid controller fail, you will have to find an
identical one to retrieve the data. Which at the speed computer
technology are discontinued might prove very hard in two or three years.
Unless of course you opt for the hight end products used in big data
center.

Good luck with your project Jean-Pierre and if you do any benchmark,
pleas share your results.

Gabriel Lapointe

Jean-Pierre CLAMME wrote:
> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for advises for choosing  a storage server/system for a little
> confocal facility. I would need a server were users could access data on a
> daily base and a backup solution.
> 
> I was thinking using one of those little network-attached storage devices
> without a real server. Does anyone have used one of those for this purpose ?
> 
> Please advise
> 
> JP
>   
>  
>