WIDE-SCALE CALL FOR INPUT: The NSS 8TB Size Limit

Question

NOTE: This thread is purposefully double-posted in the OES:Linux and OES:NetWare storage forums.
Like most of you -- I'm just a Novell customer. While I do not represent Novell in any official capacity, this call for information has been encouraged by Novell's OES team.
During this week's OES2SP3 Beta conference call, a topic was brought up again regarding the aging size limit of the NSS file-system.
Quite simply the current NSS file system size limit of 8TB is too small for modern and emerging needs. The reality is that customer data is trending larger all the time. A failure to act quickly will eventually mean the obsolecense of this file-system and apathy in the customer base.
Novell will be monitoring this thread. If sufficent interest can be documented then Novell could more easily marshall the needed internal resources to make this happen sooner rather than later.
WHAT THIS THREAD IS -NOT- INTENDED TO BECOME
- A discussion of how one could use DFS or other techniques to mitigate NSS' size constraint.
- A string of suggestions for alternative file-systems such as NTFS or Posix-based one like XFS, BTRFS, EXT4
- A debate on why people should not want a larger-than-8TB file-system. That debate is effectively over -- almost every major player in the file-system space is doing anything from 64TB into the Exabyte range (XFS, NTFS, others).
WHAT THIS THREAD IS INTENDED FOR
- A tally of other Novell customers who DO see the need and would prefer to keep this data on NSS if it could accomodate it. Your post can be as simple as: "This is important to us, too!" Also helpful, though not required, would be a brief statement or case-study of what your needs would look like (types of data, overall size and quantity of files).
On the beta calls, several of us have been vocal supporters for this change. We now hope that by casting a wider net that we can find others who perhaps have been suffering in silence.

Answer 1

Originally Posted by Elfstone
NOTE: This thread is purposefully double-posted in the OES:Linux and OES:NetWare storage forums.
Quite simply the current NSS file system size limit of 8TB is too small for modern and emerging needs. The reality is that customer data is trending larger all the time. A failure to act quickly will eventually mean the obsolecense of this file-system and apathy in the customer base.
I have a couple instances where the 8TB limit is "inconvenient," but all are for comparatively small numbers of large files. As a practical matter the bottlenecks in the metadata are reached far in advance of the storage limits. For example, how would a NSS volume perform with 100,000,000 files on it? This is the biggest issue.
So sure, there are things which could be done to expand NSS. As a practical matter the easiest would be to support larger block sizes. So 8TB becomes 16, becomes 32, ... all the way to 128TB. I assume 128TB would handle your needs. Of course how you back up and restore 128 TB in less than the age of the Universe, that's up to you.
-- Bob