[GRLUG] Fast Linux machine

[Tim Schmidt]

On 3/6/07, Al Tobey <tobert at gmail.com> wrote:
> You could always look into AOE or iSCSI.

I have.  AOE looks nice.  It's only a way to map dumb disks across an
ethernet network, however (which would make it a candidate for a
component underneath what I'm looking for).

> Perhaps mysqlfs + MySQL Cluster may be more palette-able?

The three most likely candidates for the project website all look dead.

> While it's attractive to think of using all that extra local disk you
> have lying around on your network, I tend to think that the complexity
> of a system to make it work would bite you in the end.

I agree.  I'm talking about homogeneous servers deployed specifically
for storage.  Cheap, reliable, fast storage.  There's no reason a
533Mhz C3 with a gigabit NIC, SATA, and 128Mb ram couldn't cozy up to
a 500Gb disk formatted with EXT3 and serve out chunks of real files in
multiples of 9000 bytes.  DSGFS and similar want full fledged
LAMP-type machines for each node...  but x86s are cheap.  Something
that leveraged existing software, and simply provided a layer of
abstraction on top, could get away with $100 nodes.  And at that
price, they're cheap enough to put one drive in each and not have to
worry if a motherboard or a NIC dies.  Hard drives aren't the only
things that kick off somewhat randomly.

--tim