Yeah, ... uhm... that's a hardware expense that is not an option. I make <$5000/year with this work personally and $3000 for the unit is about 3x what I'd pay for the hardware... I already have the hardware I need, just need to know the best route to go to expand. On Oct 29, 2009, at 6:32 PM, Andrew S. Zbikowski wrote: > You might want to look at a Drobo or DroboPro as a possible upgrade. > It's not as geeky as doing it yourself with Linux, but it sounds like > it's a critial business server so the investment in a little hardware > to save you time may be worthwhile. > > Drobos allow you to swap one drive at a time to grow your available > storage, so you can swap a single drive, let the Drobo rebuild, swap > the next drive, rebuild, and keep your data live at all times. > (http://www.drobo.com/) Main downside is connectivity: USB2 or > Firewire 800 for the standard 4 drive Drobo. DroboPro supports 8 > drives and adds iSCSI, which is nice if you have a GigE switch. (Linux > and Windows have built in iSCSI support, Drobo provides an iSCSI > initiator for MacOS) > > The Drobo presents itself to your computer as a 16 TB drive (for the > standard Drobo). You have to use the Drobo Dashboard or go by the > lights on the Drobo to see how full it really is. They are nice little > units for cheapish mass storage. Data Robotics' support isn't full > enterprise level, but for 1 person or SMB I think it's acceptable. A > couple friends have pointed out that you have to pay for firmware > upgrades after included manufactures warranty runs out. Seems like an > acceptable trade-off. > > Currently running a pair of the 2nd Gen 4 drive units on a MacOSX > server for archiving data as they were a cheap stop-gap measure while > waiting for budget dollars for an enterprise class archival storage. > The Drobos are mirrors of each other so we periodically test drive > failure by pulling a drive out. No issues so far. > > Whatever path you choose, make sure you back it up. RAID (and Drobo's > BeyondRAID) is not backup. ;-) > > > -- > Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us > IT Outhouse Blog Thing | http://www.itouthouse.com > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list