[mythtv-users] [OT] OpenFiler for BackEnd

Martin Bene martin.bene at icomedias.com
Wed Jan 7 10:54:19 UTC 2009


Hi,

> > I am going to be building a MythTV installation for DVD playback and
> > would like to ask whether anybody has used OF for the
> > backend storage eg. present to the front-end using either a
> > NFS or CIMS share ?
> >
> > I am planning on using a 8 bay 2U server with 2 x 160GB drives for
> > O/S and then 6 x 1TB SATA II connected to a 3WARE 9550SX RAID card.
> >
> > Thoughts ?

I wouldn't waste two of the storage bays for the OS. Two alternatives come to mind, I've used both:

A) install openfiler on flash: I've got a 4GB USB flash stick connected to an internal USB port and openfiler is running off that. I/O to the system partition is minimal, so neither speed nor max number of rewrites for flash are a big issue; since there aren't (m)any changes to the openfiler config, infrequent backups to a 2nd USB stick are just fine for me.

B) Use the array controller configuration to define a seperate small (~ 20GB) array for the operating system. You definitely need to do this at the raid controller level - having one large array > 2TB and then partitioning this most likely won't work.

* DOS Style partition tables don't work for > 2TB
* GPT Style tables usually can't be booted by the Bios

I think you'll find that being able to add another two 1TB drives to yor system is well worth the added one-time complexity in configuring the openfiler.

Bye, Martin



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