Re: [9fans] off-wall idea, file server and SAN

[geoff@x.bell-labs.com]

what's the hardware you can't locate?  it's never been a problem
to obtain the buslogic bt-948 or 958 (now called the mylex multimaster
series).  scsi disks are readily available.  if you have the money,
hp scsi mmc optical jukeboxes (now in 9gb disk size!) are easily
found.  any old vga card will do, since the file server kernel
just runs in cga mode.  the intel 8255[789] ethernet cards
(ether express pro/100+ or something like that) can be found on any
street corner or intel's web site.

or is the problem cost?  there are cheaper ncr/symbios/whatever-they're-
called-this-week scsi controllers; it looks like the current driver
supports virtually all of them.  the 3com etherlink iii cards work,
but i think they're usually more expensive than the intel ee cards.
there's support for the dec/intel 2114x (`tulip') cards, but i
haven't tried them myself.

it's really not hard to assemble a file server and it's well
worth it.  u9fs and kfs don't really show off the system;
kfs at least is quite a bit slower (order of magnitude for
some large copies i did recently).  talking to a foreign file
server running ext2 or ntfs via nfs or smb prevents use of
some of the more interesting file modes (exclusive-access or
append-only) and ought to be slower.

as for ntfs being a unicode file system, note that it's unicode,
not utf; they seem to have dropped the ball on that.  from what
little investigation i did, it also appears to be just a checklist
item; i don't think many nt applications use unicode file names,
so the relevant code probably hasn't been exercised much.