Does ZFS Obsolete Expensive NAS/SANs?

hoggoth writes "As a common everyman who needs big, fast, reliable storage without a big budget, I have been following a number of emerging technologies and I think they have finally become usable in combination. Specifically, it appears to me that I can put together the little brother of a $50,000 NAS/SAN solution for under $3,000. Storage experts: please tell me why this is or isn't feasible." Read on for the details of this cheap storage solution.

Get a CoolerMaster Stacker enclosure like this one (just the hardware not the software) that can hold up to 12 SATA drives. Install OpenSolaris and create ZFS pools with RAID-Z for redundancy. Export some pools with Samba for use as a NAS. Export some pools with iSCSI for use as a SAN. Run it over Gigabit Ethernet. Fast, secure, reliable, easy to administer, and cheap. Usable from Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a bonus ZFS let's me create daily or hourly snapshots at almost no cost in disk space or time.

Total cost: 1.4 Terabytes: $2,000. 7.7 Terabytes: $4,200 (Just the cost of the enclosure and the drives). That's an order of magnitude less expensive than other solutions.

Add redundant power supplies, NIC cards, SATA cards, etc as your needs require.

And more importantly.

[Spazntwich]

Does the overuse of TLAs obfuscate the meaning of SDS?

Re:Everyman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrrr, matey! That's a scurrrrilous rumor, ye salty sea dog!

Re:Everyman?

[iknownuttin]

Not everybody only deals with text files for a living

Well, I'll have to buy a digital camera that shoots in ASCII. Oh wait.......

Use ZFS

[Slashcrap]

Why? Because it's 128 bits! One hundred and twenty eight fucking bits! That's 64 bits more than any other FS, so any fool can see that it's twice as good as the alternatives.

It may be new and untested, but that's hardly important in the face of 128 fucking bits is it? Besides it's designed by Sun engineers and nobody has more experience in FS design and implementation. That's why all the previous Solaris filesystems rocked so hard. Nothing can beat UFS in terms of stability and performance after all.

Oh, and I nearly forgot - because it's made by Sun it's going to be 10 times as Enterprisey as any half-baked, so-called "tried and tested" RAID/SAN solution that those other suppliers are going to come up with.

Quite frankly, the fact that you're even asking this question suggests you are guilty of criminal hype evasion.

Re:Everyman?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick answer is: you are correct(!) ZFS obviates the $47k expense, and you should ignore the FUD-ing mutants that suggest that it's better to ignore software advances and instead roll back the clock, open your wallet, and replace your 12 SATA drives with hundreds of dinky 73GB SCSI dinosaurs.