Many enterprise data centers rely on Ethernet for their LAN and data traffic, and on Fibre Channel (FC) networks for their storage infrastructure. With increased adoption of 10GbE in the data center, the availability of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and new lossless 10GbE technologies, it is now possible to consolidate FC SAN storage data flows with LAN and data traffic onto the same unified Ethernet cable. Network convergence will enable enterprises to preserve their existing investments in FC storage, reduce data center costs and complexity, and simplify network management.
"Yet another storage technology? Yes. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has arrived on the scene for a number of reasons, which Steve Looby of SANBlaze Technology, Inc., a designer of SAN Emulation test products and manufacturer of a complete line of AMC, PMC, AdvancedTCA, and CompactPCI board-level storage solutions, outlines here. Steve then goes on to discuss the new test capabilities for developing and deploying FCoE storage equipment."
"Chapter 4. The DM-Multipath Configuration File 4.1. Configuration File Overview 4.2. Configuration File Blacklist 4.2.1. Blacklisting by WWID 4.2.2. Blacklisting By Device Name 4.3. Configuration File Defaults 4.4. Multipaths Device Configuration Attributes 4.5. Configuration File Devices By default, DM-Multipath provides configuration values for the most common uses of multipathing. In addition, DM-Multipath includes support for the most common storage arrays that support DM-Multipath. The default configuration values and the supported devices can be found in the /usr/share/doc/device-mapper-multipath-0.4.5/multipath.conf.defaults file. "
At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867. In this post, we’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze. Below is a video that shows a 3-D model of the Backblaze Storage Pod. Continue reading to learn the exact details of the design
Ever since Lifehacker turned me on to Dropbox, it's become one of the most essential pieces in my daily workflow. Sure it syncs files extremely well, but Dropbox is an excellent tool for so much more.
Evolution of Google File System August 08, 2009 07:26:40 EDT There is an interesting interview about the evolution of the Google File System in ACM Queue. I think it is readable by anybody, not just ACM members. One of the morals of this story is that, even if you are building what you think will be the world's biggest, you still will make design decisions that you know are not scalable because you know how to implement them. It is better to get something running right away and start using it. Of course, they also ran into scalability problems that they did not expect. So, some of the evolution of GFS was planned, and some was unplanned.
device-mapper (dm): working with multipath-tools. Part 1 Filed under: SCSI, Linux — admin @ 10:33 Device-mapper (hereafter, dm) is one of the best collection of device drivers that I have ever worked with. It brings high availability, flexibility and more to the Linux 2.6 kernel. Device-mapper is a Linux 2.6 kernel infrastructure that provides a generic way to create virtual layers of a block device while supporting stripping, mirroring, snapshots, concatenation, multipathing, etc. While many modules are built on top of device-mapper, the focus of this article is on multipath-tools. Note that I will be using the terms multipath, multipath-tools and dm-multipath interchangeably to signify the same package. Also note that dm-multipath is the name of the repackaged multipath-tools redistributed under Red Hat in their Advanced Server Linux distribution.
Scalable Informatics JackRabbit storage units are now available with 1 TB disks to provide 9.6 TB/U raw density and over 1 GB/s disk access, for less than $1/GB. In fact, our entire range of 5U systems, from 24TB to 48TB, are immediately available startin