Cost Effective Scaleable SAN Starting at 8 Terrabytes

[Bernard Lamborelle]

Richard,

Keep in mind that huge volumes with tons of files are not very efficient. The maximum single volume size that can be managed by MetaSAN is the maximum size that can be managed by the OS. It depends on whether the volume is software striped (i.e. dynamic) or not. Using standard partition tables (basic disk), the maximum size under Windows is determined by the sector size reported by the controller. With standard block size of 512 bytes, the largest volume is 2TB (terabytes). But using blocks size of 4196 bytes you can create basic volumes up to 16 TB.

You must use dynamic disks if you need to create larger volumes. Windows XP Professional manages dynamic disks in a special database instead of in the partition table, so dynamic disks are not subject to the physical limit imposed by the partition table. Dynamic NTFS volumes can be as large as 256TB.

As far as I know, the maximum volume size Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, is still 16 TB.

While MetaSAN works very well with a single large volume, we usually do not recommend trying to make a single large volume larger than 16TB. It is rather suggested to create multiple volumes to avoid performance degradation as several millions of files on a single file system will affect its general performance. It is therefore preferable to have multiple volumes (perhaps mounted in subfolders of one thus looking like one volume) rather than one huge one.

Bernard Lamborelle
Tiger Technology
http://www.tiger-technology.com
514-667-2015

[Priit Poldmaa]

Brenard,

Do you suggest to partiton volumes as dynamic disks instead of basic disks?
Or there is no performance difference?
We have MetaSAN PC in use and extra troughput is always needed.
Used volumes are not over 2TB at the moment.

Priit

[Simon Carlson-thies]

Actually if you use XSAN it is my understanding that the maximum volume size is 2PB, I could be wrong though.

Simon Carlson-Thies,
Digital Light Graphics And Animation