Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 11:29:16 -0800 (PST) From: jbarbee@singular.com (John Barbee) To: Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Software RAID-5 comparison: FreeBSD 3.0 vs. Solaris 2.6/x86... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902101127330.28204-100000@server7.singular.com> In-Reply-To: <19990210201901.026071@relay.skynet.be>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I think the RAID 5 functionality of vinum is still copyrighted. So that might be an issue for you since it's a commercial venture. This guy might be able to answer questions. jhartnag@cybernet.com. john. On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Brad Knowles wrote: > Folks, > > I'm in the process of setting up a new anonymous ftp server for the > ISP that I work for, and I'm wondering if you might be able to give me > some advice. > > > Specifically, I have currently chosen to go with Solaris 2.6/x86 + > Solstice DiskSuite 4.1 (RAID 5) + UFS logging. > > Among other things, this gives me a log-structured filesystem so that > I never have to fsck /export/home/ftp, the DiskSuite tools let me grow > the filesystem while it's online (and it doesn't have to be blown away > and re-newfs'ed), and there are some pretty cool performance monitoring > tools available from Rich Petit (SymbEL 3.x) and Adrian Crockcraft > (author of the book _Sun Performance and Tuning: Java and the Internet_). > > > Now, I can't change the hardware (400Mhz Intel Pentium II w/ 256MB > RAM, internal Western Digital 4.3GB UltraSCSI2 HD, Adaptec 3940UW SCSI > controller, five Quantum 9GB and four Western Digital 9GB UltraSCSI2 > drives). The two sets of SCSI disk drives are mounted as two separate > filesystems. > > However, if there were likely to be a significant performance > increase with FreeBSD 3.0 + vinum + softupdates, I'd seriously consider > switching (although I'd still want to try to find some decent performance > monitoring tools, hopefully as good as SymbEL 3.x). > > > At the moment, I'm not interested in running these drives in pure > striping mode. The machine isn't *that* important to us and our > customers that we need a hardware RAID controller, but whereas you could > probably get away with just striping a news server, I think the downtime > on a system-wide ftp server would probably not be acceptable. > > If anyone can provide alternative arguments to this position, I'd > love to hear them. > > > One thing I do know (from scouring previous posts to this mailing > list, as well as previous posts to news.software.nntp), is that you want > to set the stripe size as large as you feasibly can, so that any file > access is highly likely to hit only one disk at a time, thus allowing > multiple simultaneous disk accesses to be relatively evenly spread over > all drives that are available. > > Is there anything else I should know? > > -- > Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> <http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/>; > <http://wwwkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE38CCEF1>; > If you wouldn't take out a one-page ad in the Wall Street > Journal to say something, then don't say it by email. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.05.9902101127330.28204-100000>