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Date:      Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:09:57 -0500
From:      "Joseph Gleason" <clash@fireduck.com>
To:        "Michael VanLoon" <MichaelV@EDIFECS.COM>, "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net>, <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Server MB suggestions?
Message-ID:  <005801c0b652$429f8d20$dc02010a@fireduck.com>
References:  <F37F6A0194D1EF4BA8D0EF3B542BE3E00F154E@ecx1.edifecs.com>

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Some of the 3ware products will take 8 drives.  If you stock it with 75gb
drives that is 600gb.  If you need more than that, I guess this probably
isn't the solution for you.

The 3ware cards will do the RAID with IDE.  I don't want to start a holy
war, but I really see no need for SCSI if you follow a few basic rules with
your IDE drives.

1) Get good drives (IBM)
2) Get good controllers (3ware for RAID-10) or Promise cards
3) Keep it at one drive per chain.  I am no hardware expert, but it is my
understanding that there are major performance hits if you have two drives
on a single chain.

The performance on with these sort of setups are really good at a great
price.

# dd if=/dev/twed1 of=/dev/null bs=32k count=40960
40960+0 records in
40960+0 records out
1342177280 bytes transferred in 37.895167 secs (35418165 bytes/sec)

This is a fairly heavily loaded system using a 3ware card for RAID-10 and
IBM 24GB drives (7200 ata66 I think).


# dd if=/dev/ad6 of=/dev/null bs=32k count=40960
40960+0 records in
40960+0 records out
1342177280 bytes transferred in 36.997196 secs (36277811 bytes/sec)

This is a system with a Promise ATA100 card and a IBM 75GB ata100 7200rpm
drive.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael VanLoon" <MichaelV@EDIFECS.COM>
To: "'Joseph Gleason'" <clash@fireduck.com>; "Ed Henderson"
<Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net>; <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 15:29
Subject: RE: Server MB suggestions?


> I wouldn't recommend building a server with IDE drives, but maybe that's
> just me...
>
> If I were building a production server with performance in mind, I'd go
> RAID-10 (or RAID 0+1, depending on what you want to call it -- either way
> it's striping without parity, on top of mirrors).  I don't know of any IDE
> solutions capable of doing that that.  And even if there were, you
couldn't
> add enough drives to really make it worthwhile.
>
> Finally, (some) SCSI RAID controllers will let you dynamically expand the
> volume, if you need to add more drives later.
>
> I have used DPT (now Adaptec) RAID controllers with great success.  Be
> careful because Adaptec has two lines.  The line they developed
themselves,
> which is rather underwhelming, and the line they acquired when they bought
> DPT.
>
> > From: Joseph Gleason [mailto:clash@fireduck.com]
> > Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 12:15 PM
> >
> > I can answer at least a few questions.
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net>
> > To: <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG>
> > Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:23
> > Subject: Server MB suggestions?
> >
> >
> > > I am planning to use FreeBSD as my primary OS for an ISP that I am
> > starting.  I am beginning my research for the best
> > motherboard/hardware to
> > use for a production environment.  One that is reliable and
> > performs well
> > (with reliable being the number
> > > one priority!).  I plan to build the server myself.  My
> > background has
> > been in Solaris on Sun equipment so most of the hardware choices were
> > already made for me!
> [...]
> > > 2. What IDE controllers do your recommend?  Or would SCSI
> > be better (but
> > more costly)?  I want to use at least RAID1 mirroring for
> > some redundancy.
> >
> > I strongly recommend IBM deskstar drives with Promise IDE
> > controlers.  I
> > have had great experience with those.  They are fairly cheap
> > and have great
> > performance.  If you need any sort of RAID, looks into 3ware
> > ide raid cards
> > (http://www.3ware.com/).  Just remember, RAID does not
> > protect you from
> > opperator error or hackers deleting all your files.  Since
> > you are also
> > asking about tape stuff, I assume you are aware of this. ;-)
>
> See above...
>


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