From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 03:11:02 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA00356 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:11:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA00330; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:10:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.crl.com (mail.crl.com [165.113.1.22]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id DAA00197 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:10:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from io.org by mail.crl.com with SMTP id AA07774 (5.65c/IDA-1.5); Sun, 8 Sep 1996 01:09:33 -0700 Received: from zap.io.org (taob@zap.io.org [198.133.36.81]) by io.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id EAA18037; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:04:56 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:04:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: Chuck Robey Cc: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L , FREEBSD-SCSI-L Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 7 Sep 1996, Chuck Robey wrote: > > This seems somewhat odd to me. I thought you'd expend the additional cost > of RAID where you really need reliability. True enough... I was approaching a hardware RAID solution mainly from a performance standpoint. The need for a reliable e-mail server is obvious, but people often mention how news is "expendable". I disagree with that. A news server is just like a giant database server: it needs to be fast, big, *and* reliable. I have five non-customer feeds that consistently accept 90% of the articles I send then, and another four above 50%. If I lose even half a day's batch, I'm going to hear about it. Not to mention customers who get just as upset about losing articles from their favourite groups as if it were personal e-mail. > If you lose news (assuming this doesn't happen very often) you just > reload from another server, right? Assuming that some of your upstream feeds have spooled output batches and can backfill you the missing articles. > If you lose mail, it's gone, no backup at all. I'll be doing nightly backups of the mail spool to tape in case of catastrophic failure. With a projected 20GB of mail, this is going to get rather expensive. :( I read a study in some computer journal a few months back that warned of a 2x to 5x increase in cost to make an "normal" non-redundant system into a fully-redundant, high reliability, self-monitoring and self-healing server. I can start to see why now, just in the disk subsystem alone. -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@io.org, taob@ican.net) Senior Systems and Network Administrator, Internet Canada Corp. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 03:11:36 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA00541 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:11:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA00517; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:11:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.crl.com (mail.crl.com [165.113.1.22]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id DAA00324 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:09:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from io.org by mail.crl.com with SMTP id AA08426 (5.65c/IDA-1.5); Sun, 8 Sep 1996 01:15:27 -0700 Received: from zap.io.org (taob@zap.io.org [198.133.36.81]) by io.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id EAA18738; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:10:51 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:10:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: "Matthew N. Dodd" Cc: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L , FREEBSD-SCSI-L Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 7 Sep 1996, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: > > Check out BoxHill. They have some nifty stuff. They are a CMD > integrator. http://www.boxhill.com/ Thanks. They even have a neat little HTML-based tutorial showing how parity information works in a RAID. :) -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@io.org, taob@ican.net) Senior Systems and Network Administrator, Internet Canada Corp. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 03:23:36 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id DAA01091 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:23:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA01086; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:23:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.crl.com (mail.crl.com [165.113.1.22]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id DAA00283 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:23:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from io.org by mail.crl.com with SMTP id AA08274 (5.65c/IDA-1.5); Sun, 8 Sep 1996 01:14:04 -0700 Received: from zap.io.org (taob@zap.io.org [198.133.36.81]) by io.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id EAA18608; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:08:13 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 04:08:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: Joe Greco Cc: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L , FREEBSD-SCSI-L Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays In-Reply-To: <199609080523.AAA17753@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 8 Sep 1996, Joe Greco wrote: > > That would be a matter of incompetence. If you are not doing real > time outbound feeds in this day and age, you do not belong playing the > news game. Unfortunately, many customer sites (heck, many ISP's) aren't run by people who are well-versed in the black art of running an efficient news server. Some have too little bandwidth during some parts of the day to keep up, while others are simply mismanaged (always running out of disk, or the server has crashed, etc.) It's not your fault in that case, but customers don't seem to care when they call you up and complain. :-/ -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@io.org, taob@ican.net) Senior Systems and Network Administrator, Internet Canada Corp. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 12:19:43 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA17618 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 12:19:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA17600; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 12:19:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (-@dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id MAA02333 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 12:19:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA07807; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 14:18:11 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199609081918.OAA07807@dan.emsphone.com> Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays To: winter@jurai.net (Matthew N. Dodd) Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 14:18:10 -0500 (CDT) Cc: taob@io.org, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Matthew N. Dodd" at Sep 7, 96 10:16:56 pm From: dnelson@emsphone.com (Dan Nelson) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk in the last episode, Matthew N. Dodd said: > > On Sat, 7 Sep 1996, Brian Tao wrote: > > I'm looking at Raidion, CMD, Mylex and a local Toronto integrator > > called Dataplex. One thing in common is the impressive cost. ;-) A > > Check out BoxHill. They have some nifty stuff. They are a CMD > integrator. http://www.boxhill.com/ If we're all plugging our favorite RAID companies :), we have two Storage Computer boxes (50 & 90 gig) and are happy with them. Just last week, one box took a drive offline, reformatted it, and put back online as a spare, without us even noticing :). http://www.storage.com/ . -Dan Nelson dnelson@emsphone.com From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 17:17:51 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA05845 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 17:17:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA05823; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 17:17:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from io.org (io.org [198.133.36.1]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id RAA03086 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 17:17:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zap.io.org (taob@zap.io.org [198.133.36.81]) by io.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id UAA12408; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 20:16:25 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 20:16:24 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: Dan Nelson cc: "Matthew N. Dodd" , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays In-Reply-To: <199609081918.OAA07807@dan.emsphone.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 8 Sep 1996, Dan Nelson wrote: > > If we're all plugging our favorite RAID companies :), we have two > Storage Computer boxes (50 & 90 gig) and are happy with them. Are they on FreeBSD boxes? :) -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@io.org, taob@ican.net) Senior Systems and Network Administrator, Internet Canada Corp. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" From owner-freebsd-scsi Sun Sep 8 21:12:18 1996 Return-Path: owner-freebsd-scsi Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA24719 for freebsd-scsi-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 21:12:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA24689; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 21:12:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (-@dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id VAA03665 ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 21:12:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA11748; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 23:10:47 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199609090410.XAA11748@dan.emsphone.com> Subject: Re: Streamlogic RAIDION drive arrays To: taob@io.org (Brian Tao) Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 23:10:46 -0500 (CDT) Cc: dnelson@emsphone.com, winter@jurai.net, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Brian Tao" at Sep 8, 96 08:16:24 pm From: dnelson@emsphone.com (Dan Nelson) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk in the last episode, Brian Tao said: > > On Sun, 8 Sep 1996, Dan Nelson wrote: > > > > If we're all plugging our favorite RAID companies :), we have two > > Storage Computer boxes (50 & 90 gig) and are happy with them. > > Are they on FreeBSD boxes? :) Well, no... They serve a Novell server and two SCO boxes. The Novell and one of the SCO machines both have two scsi cards in them, as do the RAID boxes. We use the disk-concatenation feature of both OS's to get one drive, but the throughput of two F/W scsi busses. If Micro Focus ever made a FreeBSD version of Cobol, we would use FreeBSD, though. We've hit the 2-gig filesize limit on SCO quite a few times. -Dan Nelson dnelson@emsphone.com