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I'm looking to build a pretty simple RAID-5 or RAID-6 array and I'm looking into my options. The machine will be a 64bit Ubuntu Linux Server and will essentially be used as a backup/file server. I'll need to store pretty large files, so a FAT-32 filesystem won't exactly do the trick :)
I've used ext3
and ext4
in the past, but this has largely been for desktop environments. I'm very intrigued by the btrfs
project, and would like to use it if possible. zfs
looks sweet, but I read a while back that it doesn't play nicely with Linux. What filesystem should I use?
All of this is above the level of hardware/software RAID configuration. What should I use for RAID? btrfs
only supports RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-10 configurations and I'm specifically interested in RAID-5 and RAID-6. If I use hardware RAID, does the array appear to the operating system as a single hard disk? If so, then this would essentially mitigate the RAID support issues with btrfs
. However, is there a way for me to know if and when a drive fails from the operating system level? How does one restore an array in the event of a failure?
EDIT
As requested, the size I'm looking at is at least 6TB. With RAID-5, I can accomplish this with 4 2TB drives. With RAID-6, I believe I'm looking at 5 2TB drives for the same amount of storage. I don't think I'll need to be able to expand the array, but if I did, it would be at least in a few years' time.
Some other things which may influence filesystems... What size do you plan the system to be? Do you intend to increase the size later? – camster342 – 2011-05-24T00:45:37.617
My apologies for leaving that out, I've just edited it, so take a look, I'm looking at building at least an array with at least 6TB of storage. – Naftuli Kay – 2011-05-24T17:46:02.397
I just thought of another couple of things that can come into play when choosing filesystems. Do you know if sort of things you might be storing are fewer larger files? or more smaller files? or too much of a mix to be certain? – camster342 – 2011-05-25T00:02:32.037
Also, is expandability of the filesystem a big need? Or will it always stay the same size? – camster342 – 2011-05-25T00:03:17.030
Not for the foreseeable future. At some point, I may wish to expand the array, but not for at least a few years. – Naftuli Kay – 2011-05-25T01:44:29.910