Help with server solution!

[iamme]

I? am new to linux but I am told that I can use linux as my OS for a network storage/file server


It will be a simple RAID 5 setup using 4 1TB HDD's

With a AMD Opteron CPU, 1GB ECC RAM, and Supermicro H8SSL-I Opteron 100/PCI-X/SATA Server Motherboard

I need something easy to use and that will interact with windows xp pro because all the desktops are windows xp pro and they will be sending and receiving backups and files from the server!

[iwanabeguru]

Hi

if you want set up a storeage server for windows clients on linux you need samba. Samba is a server program which can handle the microsofts SMB file sharing protocoll.

[IsaacKuo]

I don't know if you posted in the Debian forum on purpose, but in any case Debian is an excellent choice for a server. Basically, connect up all of your hardware and a bootable CDRom drive. Use the Debian "netinstall" CD (it's a small .iso). This will download most of the OS directly from the internet.

During the install, there are two parts you'll want to pay particular attention to--the partitioning step, and the software package selection step.

In the partitioning step, you'll want to set up software RAID. I suggest that you partition each drive with a small ~3gig partition and a large data partition. You'll want your partitions to look something like this:

sda1 3gig ext3 /
sda2 997gig RAID

sdb1 3gig swap
sdb2 997gig RAID

sdc1 3gig ext3 unused
sdc2 997gig RAID

sdd1 3gig ext3 unused
sdd2 997gig RAID

After setting up these partitions, select the option to configure RAID. You'll want to create one RAID5 array with the 4 big partitions. After creating this RAID array, set up a manual mount point for md0 so it looks something like this:

md0 2991gig ext3 /mnt/raidarray

Setting up a RAID array can be a bit intimidating, so just take it slow and verify that everything you see makes sense. Note that in my suggested partition setup, there are two unused 3gig partitions. This extra space may be helpful for doing various things to help recover from a crash.

Note that the OS drive represents a single point of failure. Unfortunately, you're going to have to live with a single point of failure with software RAID, unless you really know what you're doing. Also, with software RAID recovery from any hard drive failure is non-trivial. If uptime and ease of recovery are important to you, you should consider spending the extra money on a true quality hardware raid solution.

The other thing you need to pay attention to is the software selection suite. You will want to REMOVE the default "Desktop Workstation" suite (unless you want a GUI interface), and you want to ADD the "File Server suite". Use arrow keys to navigate up/down and use <space> to toggle. The File Server suite includes samba, which you'll have to configure after the OS has completed installation.

Unfortunately, samba configuration can be a bit complex. The exact way you'll want to configure it will depend on exactly what your needs are.

[iamme]

The motherboard I am using is a server board with hardware raid 5 support onboard

[IsaacKuo]

That makes things much simpler! Then just set up the RAID array in the BIOS, and the OS will simply see the array as a single hard drive. I'd recommend you partition into three partitions like this:

sda1 3gigs ext3 /
sda2 1gig swap
sda3 ~3terabytes ext3 /mnt/data

With this partition scheme, the OS is stored entirely on the first partition. You give the third partition a manually assigned mount point--/mnt/data is an arbitrary mount point which doesn't mean anything at all special to the OS. This is convenient for system administration because that means the OS considers it nothing but just some data. It's like having a C: and D: partition in Windows where you don't map My Documents or anything else to the D: partition. The partition is simply nothing but data.

As already mentioned, you'll use samba to create a Windows style share. You'll have to manually set up samba for whatever your specific needs are. The default samba shares match *nix style security, which may or may not be what you want.