Setup Vtrak as NAS through Mac Mini? Possible?
First off I think I need to explain something, because when I ask this question most of you will wonder why I'm not just making a normal XSAN.
Where I work we've had two different XSAN and they both failed miserably.
First setup, a XSAN 2 point something.
First, one metadata controller server died. Fair enough that happens. But before we could replace it, the remaining MDC lost connection to the XSAN admin tool. So we couldn't manage or add new MDC's and had literally zero control after that. When the mount was lost, we rebooted the remaining MDC and crossed our fingers. Surprisingly it worked long enough for us to update to Lion Server.
Second setup, Lion Server.
It started with some random failovers and the dreaded "something happened" notification (pointless).
Then it got worse by randomly disconnecting the volume and at times turning off the volume.
Now **** has hit the fan and the two MDC’s no longer talk together. There is like 10 different errors, where any one of them would be cause for panic. Our XSAN is quite literally dying.
We’ve had several certified and none-certified people looking at it with no success.
We don’t have the money to keeping dealing with this. So we are moving away from the XSAN setup and to something simpler.
I need the simplest setup you can think off. We have an extra Promise Vtrak and I’m thinking I would setup it up as a NAS.
Can I use the Mac Mini to set up the Vtrak, but with no necessary data on the Mac Mini. So if the Mac Mini died, the Vtrak would remain visible on the network via an assigned IP. Like a shared drive/SMB.