From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Jan 5 21:11:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from inc.net (mailhost.inc.net [204.95.160.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F02A15176 for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 21:11:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from steve@inc.net) Received: from inc.net (ess.phreak.net [207.250.97.69]) by inc.net (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id XAA27137; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 23:11:28 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <387423EB.EF2B3DD2@inc.net> Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 23:11:07 -0600 From: Steve Kaczkowski Organization: Time Warner Telecom Internet & Data Division X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en,zh,zh-CN,zh-TW,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dannyman Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Reccomend RAID for FreeBSD + Cyrus References: <20000105165135.A29204@stumpy.dannyland.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org dannyman wrote: > > 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 > Checkout the Mylex DAC960SX External SCSI to SCSI RAID controller. Basically it's a box that sits in a fullhigh 5.25" bay and has a number of SCSI channels on it. You run one side to your onboard (or PCI card) SCSI bus, then hookup one of the other chains to you array of disks. You then setup up the RAID (via cool LCD panel or serial connection) in the controller, up to RAID 5, hot spares,mirrors,etc,etc,etc. As far as your OS is concerned it sees one big disk,so do what you like to it. Since all RAID functions are being handled by the RAID controller there isn't any performance issues to worry about, it's just pure redundancy and speed... Very slick stuff.. -- Steve Kaczkowski Time Warner Telecom IDD steve@inc.net (414)908-9012 http://www.inc.net (603)737-9209 Fax To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message