Hi Loic,
[...]
In a system with 24 x 500 GB disks, I would like to have usable storage of
20 x 500 GB and use the remaining disks for redundancy. What do you
recommend? If I understand correctly I can't boot from ZFS so one or more
of the remaining 4 disks might be needed for the OS.
This is (in my opinion) probably the only real issue with the X4500.
The system disk(s) must be with the data disks (since there are "only"
48 disks slots) and the two bootable disks are on the same controller
which effectively make this controller a single point of failure (there
are easy ways to move the second system disk to another controller, but
you still need a working "first" controller to boot).
Can you boot from a USB device? You can have an inexpensive RAID-1 USB
device for the root and OS.
Although in our experience, controller failures are rare on the X4500
(one failure in over a year with a few tens of X4500).
Did you lose data with a controller failure? I assume can you just move
the 48 disks to another box.
It will take me some time to digest your other comments. But I made a
mistake in what I wrote. I want to have a 48 disk box with 500 GB disks.
From this (raw) 24 TB of storage I want to get 20 TB usable (eg, lose no
more than 8 disks of the 40 for redundancy and the OS). I mistakenly
wrote 20/24 disks and 10 TB in my email. How would you revise your
recommendations for 20TB of usable storage?
Cheers,
Bruce
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