Whoa! Way over my head, but why not use multiple nics in the server. I
think you talked about this, but you seemed to want make them dedicated
to single workstations. And while your at it if you want a killer server
why not use a gigabit network, end of throughput problem (or is it).

What's LVD?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven L. Brendtro [mailto:sbrendtro@home.com]
> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 11:54 AM
> To: kclug@kclug.org
> Subject: Theoretical Samba File Server
> 
> 
> I am researching to build a killer linux file server.  Here 
> is what I am
> thinking:
> 
> Dual Athlon box with ICP Vortex RAID card, 7 or so 36GB 
> LVD/160 Hard drives,
> 1 GB ram, etc.  I have multiple users who will need to simultaneously
> sustain a throughput over the network of around 10MB/sec (80 
> Mbit/sec).
> This is close to saturating a 100Mbit/sec network interface.
> 
> With an ICP card maintaining random access throughput of over 
> 200 MB/sec,
> and the only bottleneck in the network cards, I was 
> considering installing
> multiple network interfaces on the server, say 4 of them.  
> Each of these
> will be connected to a dedicated switch, each to a dedicated 
> workstation.
> >From there the switches will make connection back to a local 
> area network.
> I will then run multiple SAMBA daemons, each with thier own 
> unique netbios
> server name (FILESRV1, FILESRV2, etc.), but each having share 
> names that
> point to the same mount point on the file system.
> 
> With this setup, I theoretically should be able to draw 
> around 80 Mbit/sec
> per interface.
> 
> My question is this.  Does anyone see any problems inherent 
> to this setup?
> Could I possibly run into problems with SAMBA sending too 
> much broadcast
> traffic, reducing the throughput for my other network 
> segments on the same
> box?
> 
> Any comments/suggestions are welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> Steven Brendtro
> 
> 
> 
> 
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