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Date:      Wed, 5 Jan 2000 16:51:36 -0800
From:      dannyman <dannyman@dannyland.org>
To:        freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Reccomend RAID for FreeBSD + Cyrus
Message-ID:  <20000105165135.A29204@stumpy.dannyland.org>

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I've set up a Cyrus IMAP/POP server for my company with Postfix as the MTA.

We'll be getting a NetApp filer for /home and other happy NFS/CIFS sharing.
I'm thinking to have a FreeBSD shell cluster available for users.

Cyrus, though, is not a happy camper with NFS.  I'm thinking to get a
dedicated external RAID - the type with SCSI out.  I've noticed some
RAID boxen come with dual external connectors.  If I could hook a RAID up to
two boxen, and turn up the one when the other fails, that would rock.

Of course, if my mail server crashes, I'm going to have to come in and do
physical interaction anyway ... one cable manually transferred to a hot spare
seems reasonable.

My puzzle is what features do I want in my RAID, and where should I get it
from.  Some colleagues suggested that for mail, RAID 0+1 would be preferable
to RAID5 for performance reasons.  I tend to wonder though, if RAID5 may not
be more appropriate if people are going to end up using the mail server to
store old mail.

This is all nice and theoretical, and I'd appreciate input, but what I really
want are reccomendations - what products and vendors are particularly good to
work with and which should I avoid.  FWIW, I'm in the Silicon Valley.

I mean, I'd want:
redundant, hot-swap power, fans, etc.
a hot spare
expandable capacity

I also want to know how fast a RAID recovers from a disk failure, what
performance impact, etc.  I also want to know which controllers interface best
with FreeBSD.  Heck, hardware suggestions for the mail server itself wouldn't
hurt. :)

Has anyone experience with this sort of thing?  Anyone have a Cyrus setup +
RAID with some sort of failover in the event of a machine crashing?

Thanks,
-danny

-- 
come.to/dannyman


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