[Samba] Low cost additional storage on a Samba server

[Gary Dale]

Easiest way is to implement software RAID on your current server.
- add 2 (or more) new drives partitioned identically to your current 
drive (unless you want to replace your existing drive)
  - partition type is fd (RAID)
- create RAID 5 arrays using the new drives & partitions (except for 
/boot which should be on a RAID 1 array)
  - common setup is (but use whatever partition setup you currently have):
     - /boot --> RAID 1
    - / --> 20G RAID 5
    - /home --> rest of space
  - tell mdadm that 1 drive is missing from each array
- copy the files from each partition on your current drive to the RAID 
partitions on the new array
- update grub to use the new RAID arrays
- reboot into new array
- if it works, add your original drive (or its replacement) into the 
RAID array(s)

Needless to say, back up everything before starting. Creating a RAID 
array is safe but mistakes happen and hardware fails.

Benefit of RAID over NAS is
- don't need to change client setups
- can be expanded by adding new drives into array
- speed on reads
- protection against hard drive failure

Google Linux RAID setup for detailed howtos.



Jean-Francois Leblond wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> At my client, I installed  Samba v3 
> on a Linux box (Centos 4) with a NT style domain to act as a file server (about 50 Windows clients).
> It's been running fine for a few years now.
>
> It's about to run out of disk space.
>
> I was looking for a low cost solution and came across the low-cost NAS that are available now for the soho market.
>
> The problem is that some support only smb file access for Linux clients which for my case would be out of the question. 
>
> Some support NFS mounts from Linux host. 
>
> I wanted to have some of your comments on presenting a NFS mounted filesystem on my Samba server to Windows clients. Do you think, I would be looking for trouble ? I'm in a french speaking region so we're using accent. My experience with NFS is a little bit old and I want to make sure I wouldn't loose the french accent or spaces in filenames along the way.
>
> Of course a direct-attached storage would be a sure thing but I was looking for a lower cost solution.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> JF Leblond
>
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