PetaSAN: The storage system that offers performance, security, and flexibility

If Proxmox helps to create virtual servers and LibreNMS to carry out the monitoring, PetaSAN offers the support to manage the storage of the information.

Why PetaSAN

PetaSAN has allowed us to have a high availability storage system with sufficient capacity to meet the needs of a company at a low price compared to other commercial solutions because its operation is not tied from its development to the use of specific brands of hard drives or servers.

PetaSAN can be optimally configured with any type of infrastructure, and it can develop as needed.

The most relevant aspect of using PetaSAN is the usage of the CEPH file system. This exclusive system for Linux-based software oversees offering “high availability” of data storage. PetaSAN makes each server a node and generates “clusters”, which divides the information hosted on the network. This ensures the proper use of storage capacity and flexibility.

In addition, the parties have copies in different nodes and, therefore, the global files can be rearmed in the event of a server shutdown, without the risk of losing data. Another very important advantage is that PetaSAN allows us to quickly offer our servers to be connected to storage through protocols such as iSCSI, CIFS / SMB, NFS, S3, and Ceph natively.

For EdgeUno, storage systems have been built with four one-rack-unit servers, with the capacity to hold 12 hard drives. Therefore, it is possible to have two small hard drives (in raid 1) for the operating system and the rest of the drives dedicated to storage.

In EdgeUno, 4TB SAS SSDs have been used, allowing to have more than 20TB of space in high availability for storage systems with disk write speeds very close to 12Gbps. This implementation has made it possible to offer a stable and reliable storage system for internal systems and clients of the CLOUD service.

The interaction between Free Software and EdgeUno

Beyond technical considerations, it is important to point out the different types of interactions that occur while using tools such as Proxmox, LibreNMS, and PetaSAN.

First, the interaction between the tools themselves: as we mentioned before, these are not tools that offer total solutions, but rather the integration of several flexible tools that can be tailored to specific uses and effectively connect. Second, the interaction of the technical teams in charge of solving the operating problems of the company and the free software development communities, providing innovation and social contribution, and third, the work as a community that becomes necessary among team members.