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NFS recommendation
Hi,
I'm about to install a new Linux server at work in a few days, which will be
used as an NFS server (SAMBA would also be nice, but not high priority).
I have a few questions:
1. What is the latest reliable configuration I should be using? I'm familiar
with RedHat, so it boils down to RH5.2, RH6.0, or RH6.0 with the latest 2.2.x
kernel. I would use 5.2 if it's more mature unless it's NFS performance is
**substantially** lower than 6.0's performance. Also notice we *don't* use an
SMP machine, so all the 2.2.x improvements in SMP are not relevant.
2. Is it possible to configure all 3 disks as one single ext2 partition, on a
standard kernel? I know there are patches for that, but I'd rather install
something simple that works out of the box.
If you are not bored with this, please read on a little bit more:
The system is based on an intel server motherboard (I think it's a T440BX, if
my memory serves me right), which has onboard video, 100MBit ethernet, and
SCSI (IIRC). We orderd a Colombus III case (which the intel web page claims to
hold up to 5 hard disks, and support ventilation for fast and hot 10,000 RPM
disks).
The system will initially hold 3 x 22GB IBM ATA/66 disks. We didn't choose
SCSI disks because they are twice as expensive, which we don't really need. We
may add a promise ATA/66 card later and more ATA/66 disks if we need to. (Yes,
I know the onboard 440BX chipset does only ATA/33).
The purpose of this server is to serve as a large **temporary file** storage
location. This usually involves object files, executables, and simulation data
files. All data is non essential, and can be easily recreated, even if I
completely reformat the system. The only reason we added it was the
prohibitively high price of adding fiber channel disks to our main NetApp F720
NFS server. We don't want it to be full with gigabytes of temp files.
Our clients are all UltraSparc machines, running Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6 .
Please notice that I'm *NOT* a sysadmin. My main job is hardware design, and
I'm not supposed to spend too much time on this (my bosses wants me to spend
my time on hardware design, not on system administration). I need
recommendations for a configuration that installs simply, and that works
*reasonably* well as far as speed and reliability. even though it's a temp
file server, file corruptions on heavy load during work are not really
welcomed...
(My experience with RedHat 5.2 was wonderfull. Within 30 minutes of opening up
the brand new Compaq box we got, I booted a Cheapbytes RH5.2 CD, zapped the
Win95 system, and had it running a private FTP server. Out of these 30
minutes, only 10 minutes was spent at the keyboard answering questions...)
thanks,
Udi