From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Mar 26 16:10: 7 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from zogbe.tasam.com (hc6526bd1.dhcp.vt.edu [198.82.107.209]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B43C737B719 for ; Mon, 26 Mar 2001 16:10:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from clash@fireduck.com) Received: from blah (hc6526bd1.dhcp.vt.edu [198.82.107.209]) by zogbe.tasam.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with SMTP id f2R09vG78337; Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:09:58 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <005801c0b652$429f8d20$dc02010a@fireduck.com> From: "Joseph Gleason" To: "Michael VanLoon" , "Ed Henderson" , References: Subject: Re: Server MB suggestions? Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:09:57 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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" To: "'Joseph Gleason'" ; "Ed Henderson" ; 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" > > To: > > 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... > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message