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The Hunter
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- May 29, 2002
- Messages
- 414
I've found myself with an ever growing collection of various media files, and it's getting to be a pain to accommodate and organize it on my main box. I've been looking at some options, and it looks like the cheapest and most flexible option is to do a Linux setup with a RAID 5 and EVMS, with one big XFS volume on top, but I've got a few questions.
a) I'm planning on starting off pretty small - just 3x 320GB drives in a RAID 5 since I'm not exactly overflowing with cash, and 640GB should be enough for a while. It's my understanding that when you want to add more capacity, you can just plug in another drive and have EVMS expand the array (although it can take quite a long time to rebuild it) - is that true, or have I misread?
b) Right now to keep costs down I'm looking at using an ASUS M2N-E, since it has 6 SATA ports and I can avoid having to buy a separate controller until the array gets pretty big. Does this board play well with Linux, or am I better off getting a different board with a separate controller (keep in mind that I'm not too concerned about huge I/O speed, just enough to stream movies etc over a network)?
c) One of the reasons I like the sound of EVMS and Linux RAID is that if some part of my system other than the RAID array gets hosed (mobo, controller, OS drive, etc), I can easily switch it over to a new system without any trouble. How complex is this process? Is it just a matter of copying a backup of a config file and plugging in the array? Are there any other catches?
d) I've had a look around google and while there seems to be some pretty thorough EVMS reference documentation, I haven't really seen much in the way of practical guides. I have a decent knowledge of Linux, enough that I think I could muddle through setting this all up, but a good step by step guide would be pretty helpful to avoid any of the little bits and pieces that I might overlook first time through. Are there any such guides, or is it pretty much limited to the official documentation?
e) I'm trying to do this on the cheap, so I've thought about just putting a SATA controller into an old barebones system I have sitting around (P3-600, 384 MB) - is that enough computational power for keeping up with the RAID tasks if I'm streaming video etc? Or am I going to encounter more headaches than it's worth?
f) Have I overlooked anything here? Insert any miscellaneous tips here.
a) I'm planning on starting off pretty small - just 3x 320GB drives in a RAID 5 since I'm not exactly overflowing with cash, and 640GB should be enough for a while. It's my understanding that when you want to add more capacity, you can just plug in another drive and have EVMS expand the array (although it can take quite a long time to rebuild it) - is that true, or have I misread?
b) Right now to keep costs down I'm looking at using an ASUS M2N-E, since it has 6 SATA ports and I can avoid having to buy a separate controller until the array gets pretty big. Does this board play well with Linux, or am I better off getting a different board with a separate controller (keep in mind that I'm not too concerned about huge I/O speed, just enough to stream movies etc over a network)?
c) One of the reasons I like the sound of EVMS and Linux RAID is that if some part of my system other than the RAID array gets hosed (mobo, controller, OS drive, etc), I can easily switch it over to a new system without any trouble. How complex is this process? Is it just a matter of copying a backup of a config file and plugging in the array? Are there any other catches?
d) I've had a look around google and while there seems to be some pretty thorough EVMS reference documentation, I haven't really seen much in the way of practical guides. I have a decent knowledge of Linux, enough that I think I could muddle through setting this all up, but a good step by step guide would be pretty helpful to avoid any of the little bits and pieces that I might overlook first time through. Are there any such guides, or is it pretty much limited to the official documentation?
e) I'm trying to do this on the cheap, so I've thought about just putting a SATA controller into an old barebones system I have sitting around (P3-600, 384 MB) - is that enough computational power for keeping up with the RAID tasks if I'm streaming video etc? Or am I going to encounter more headaches than it's worth?
f) Have I overlooked anything here? Insert any miscellaneous tips here.
