Greyhole - Easily expandable & redundant storage pool using Samba [Updated]
(Some background info on why I created Greyhole can be read in my previous post.)
Update: Greyhole has matured quite a lot since I posted this. You can now learn about Greyhole on the official website: www.greyhole.net.
There. I did it. Greyhole is now available to all avid enthusiasts who would like to try it.
What is it? It’s Windows Home Server Drive Extender concept, but open source, running on Linux. To quote myself:
Greyhole is an application that uses Samba to create a storage pool of all your available hard drives (whatever their size, however they’re connected), and allows you to create redundant copies of the files you store, in order to prevent data loss when part of your hardware fails. You can read more about it on the official website: www.greyhole.net
I’m now looking for adventurous souls who would like to battle-test it. I’m sure there are bugs, and probably some of them will delete data it shouldn’t. So I’d like to find those ASAP, before I loose the 5TB of data I myself have stored in my own Greyhole server.
So if you’re fed up with the Windows 2003 Server overhead you’re now using just to get Drive Extender functionalities, or if you were waiting for an open source version to use it, or if you’d just like to help me… Start on the link above, and follow instructions in the INSTALL file. You’ll need to be somewhat familiar with Linux to be able to install it. Newbies should restrain themselves from using Greyhole until it reach the 1.0 milestone (or something).
**Big red warning: Do NOT store your only copies of important files on Greyhole! It’s not ready for that. It needs to be tested first. **I am using it to store 5TB of backups, photos, videos and music here, but I’m telling you that you shouldn’t do that! You’ll cry yourself to death when Greyhole eats all of it, as I’m sure it’s capable of!
That being said, the INSTALL file is pretty detailed, and the configuration file should help you understand what you need to know.
Feel free to discuss here, or open issues in the project page, if you have suggestions, comments, or bug reports.