CompleteFusion

Recently, I needed to implement a low-cost, enterprise grade storage system for backups and to provide network attached storage for vserver-based Debian servers. After considering the requirements and projected short-term future growth, I decided to build a storage server with at least 12TB of raw storage, which would allow me to create two 4TB RAID6 arrays.

Ultimately, I was able to get 13TB of raw storage for less than $6300 (~$484 per TB, compared to many vendors starting prices of $1000 or more per TB).

Hardware

1. Supermicro CSE-933T-R760B Black 3U Rackmount Case – $769.99
2. Supermicro MBD-X7DBN-O Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000P Extended ATX Motherboard – $359.99
3. 2x Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor – $224.99 ($449.98 for 2)
4. 4x Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR2 667 FB-DIMM ECC RAM – $212.99 ($851.96 for 4)
5. 13x Western Digital RE3 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive – $189.99 ($2469.87 for 13)
6. 2x Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM Hard Drive – $229.99 ($459.98 for 2)
7. HighPoint RR3540 RAID Controller – $799.99

Total: $6161.76 (plus shipping)

After reviewing the current Linux distributions targeted towards NAS systems, like FreeNAS and OpenFiler, I decided to stick with a simple system using Debian with LVM2 and AoE. My next post, Debian NAS using AoE (Part 2), will dig into the details of the OS and software setup.

I recently decided to install Plone to test its' usefulness as a content management system. When installing Plone on Debian Lenny, I ran into the following error:

pycentral: pycentral pkginstall: not overwriting local files

After a quick search, I found an easy way to resolve the error is to run the following command:

echo "overwrite-local = 1" >> /etc/python/debian_config

Then just install Plone as you normally would, and remove the added line from /etc/python/debian_config after the installation completes:

apt-get install plone3-site

In a previous post, I wrote about eight great WordPress plugins that I use. Since then, I've discovered and implemented another group of extremely useful eight plugins:

• AJAXed WordPress – Adds AJAX functionality to your WordPress blog, and makes adding comments and navigating pages easier.
• Contact Form 7 – An extremely useful, customizable contact form that allows users to contact you without exposing your email address to spammers.
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – Generates a customizable sitemap to make navigation and SEO easier.
• Feedburner Feedsmith – Provides a simple way to implement Feedburner RSS feeds for posts and comments.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Generates an XML sitemap for use with Google's webmaster tools.
• Platinum SEO Pack – Another SEO pack to use instead of the All-in-One SEO pack I mentioned previously.
• ShareThis – Adds social media buttons above/below posts so your visitors can easily share your blog content on Digg, Reddit, etc.
• WP-Syntax – Adds GeSHi syntax highlighting for "pre" tagged content in posts.

I always like sharing links to sites I enjoy, and one of my favorite web design sites is Open Source Web Design. It's a great place for web designers to share templates, get inspiration for new designs, and get recognition for their talent. There's a wide range of designs available at OSWD, including those suitable for business use. A design I posted there two years ago, called chic02, is a fairly simple and well organized design which has been downloaded more than 20,000 times.