Talk:Vblade - ATA over Ethernet

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Revision as of 05:37, 29 August 2006

Comparision

This isn't really a fair comparision for cost at all, after all Coraid's devices are SATA and Gigabit Ethernet optimized. But still it's a fun comparision to see what opensource hardware and software can get you.

15 blades no included hard drives

15 blades x 750GB = max 11.25TB

Coraid

• SATA Storage - SR1520
  • Total: $3996

Kurobox + Netgear Switch

• 15 Kuro Box HG WR vblades
• 15 x $149 each = $2235
• NETGEAR GS116 16-port Gigabit Switch 10/100/1000 Mbps
• $167
  • Total:$2402

Savings

Open Source Saves you $1594

Conclusion

As I said certainly not a fair comparison, the Coraid hardware is different (SATA vs PATA) and optimized from a ethernet switching standpoint vs the Kurobox/Linkstation.

But still a savings of $1600 is nothing to sneeze at!

- Ramuk 23:57, 27 August 2006 (EDT)

At 1000Mb/s / 8bits/Byte / 15 kuroboxes = 8.33 MB/Sec needed in transfer rate per kurobox RAIDed together to completely soak a 1Gb/s ethernet connection. Seems like it could be doable expecially with XFS....hmmmmmmmm

- Ramuk 02:17, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

My Setup

1. USB Drive
   1. I bricked my LS when trying to mount an internal partition the first time I tried this, so I used a usb drive this time around. Which on my LinkStation was /dev/sda1 - Ramuk
2. My Client
   1. In this case I have a PIII/600 Compaq Armada laptop running Ubuntu Dapper Drake. - Ramuk

Transfer speeds

• Very interesting indeed. Mounting a 20 GB USB 2.0 External Drive over a 100baseT switch using the StarPort software from Rocket Division Software on a Windows XP computer I was able to get a sustained 4 Megabyte/sec or 32 MB/s transfer rate..... not too bad. I'll have to try it with a EXT3 block device and a Unix computer. Ramuk 01:36, 29 August 2006 (EDT)