[ Thanks to Matt for
this link. ]
“IT professionals may soon have a lower-cost alternative to
expensive storage area networks (SANs), according to a presentation
by self-described Linux ‘kernel hacker’ Ben LaHaise at the Ottawa
Linux Symposium.“LaHaise revealed his vision to create a reliable storage
solution using ‘commodity,’ or off-the-shelf hardware, therefore
dramatically reducing costs. The core of the project was to support
large storage capacities, easy setup, and error detection.“The project entails a Linux kernel driver, currently undergoing
development, which passes storage requests directly to the hard
drive. By networking several servers over inexpensive Ethernet
hardware, redundancy can be achieved for a far lower cost than
commercially available network attached storage…”