Opefniler (NAS Storage)

Do you want the filers to replicate between them?

If so try using Rsync.

You could also use HA/DRBD,

DRBD refers to block devices designed as a building block to form high availability (HA) clusters. This is done by mirroring a whole block device via an assigned network. DRBD can be understood as network based raid-1.

http://www.drbd.org/

see
http://www.zimbio.com/Linux/articles/hLsBMCVy6Xs/How+Create+HA+Active+Passive+Openfiler+Cluster

Hi,

Okay thanks for the information.
Will DRBD perform? What will be the speed? Do i really need to have two nic's availible on the openfilers?
Does i need to be installed in the console? Because i don't see any graphic interface install.

What about the Cluster manager off openfiler?

Has FreeNAS 8 the same ? Is it easy to configure? Will it perform better?
Are there other solutions?

Thanks.

Yes, Clustering or DRBD will do the same thing, but I warn you it's a lot of work!

RSYNC, may be a simpler option to and from Openfiler, or to and from FreeNAS 0.6 or 0.7 (not the lastest build). or FreeNAS 8.0 if you really have to!

Article here on Openfiler and FreeNAS Rsync

http://www.r71.nl/kb/technical/221-openfiler-freenas-and-rsync

Personally, Openfiler, FreeNAS are poor performs for use with iSCSI and FreeNAS, they are old, outdated and just not been keeping up with the times.

I would recommend one of the following:-

1. Solaris Express 11
2. Openindiana
3. Nexenta project

All support ZFS, iSCSI and NFS far superior than Openfiler and FreeNAS. They perform Snapshots, DeDupe, Mirror between Servers.

I dont agree with openfiler and freenas being old as they are based on linux and thats never old the problem with normal openfiler and freenas is they use old hardware thats why appear old with poor performance you can setup openfiler with a 10gb nic for iscsi and you can hyardly call them old with poor performance
I do aggree that the openfiler iscsi appears to be poor against a proper san like a netapp filer but like I said use proper server hardware for openfiler and its ok but not up to proper top end production servers at the moment but if you recall proper san hardware is expensive especially if its production / enterpise hardware and the companies making them know how much to sell them for  

Both openfilers as the situation now is have following:

Intel D55WB motherboards with i5 processor and 8 Gb ram.
On the motherboards is 1Gbit connection (Intel® 82578DC Gigabit Ethernet Controller).

Will this be enough for performance? Now my ESXi servers use one openfiler true NFS share, and it's working stable. But what will happen when i deploy another one and they need to synch/DRBD?

Is it necessearry to add an extra network adapter because in the article they do.

thanks.

Hardware is fine, yes you need to add another NIC.

Fast Disks is what you need.

I have both in the machines a dell perc 5i inside with WD hard disks (7200rpm).

Yes, not exactly fast, but more disks the better.

Okay, thanks for information.
I was thinking about putting in the extra network card:

- http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/network-adapters/gigabit-network-adapters/pro-1000-pt-dp.html
- Intel® PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter

which one should i choose? With in mind that there is an ethernet on the mobo (Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem using the Intel® 82578DC Gigabit Ethernet Controller)

Thanks.

That will be compatible with Openfiler as it used  the e1000 module.

you can use teamed nics in openfiler so 2 * 1g nics = 2g

Okay,

I received the hardware. Now i have my openfiler 1 with following partitions (see image1) and on openfiler 2 the same.

Now for openfiler 1 you will see a there are two volumes with important data on it.
For openfiler i didn't created a volume yet.

Now i want to follow the guide steps for DRDB:
http://www.howtoforge.com/openfiler-2.99-active-passive-with-corosync-pacemaker-and-drbd

What will hapen to the volumes on openfiler 1?
Because this data is really important. How should i proceed?

Thanks.


openfiler1.jpg
openfiler2.jpg

Before you dop anything backup!