From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Mar 10 4:51: 0 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02D8D37B404 for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 04:50:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from psknet.com (voyager.psknet.com [63.171.251.15]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id E7C8143FCB for ; Mon, 10 Mar 2003 04:50:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from troy@psknet.com) Received: (qmail 22549 invoked by uid 85); 10 Mar 2003 12:47:38 -0000 Received: from troy@psknet.com by voyager.psknet.com with qmail-scanner-1.02 (uvscan: v4.1.40/v4100. . Clean. Processed in 0.778773 secs); 10 Mar 2003 12:47:38 -0000 Received: from pool-141-152-68-63.roa.east.verizon.net (HELO abyss) (141.152.68.63) by voyager.psknet.com with SMTP; 10 Mar 2003 12:47:37 -0000 From: "Troy Settle" To: Subject: Mail Storage Reccomendations (3Ware vs Adaptec vs ....) Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 07:51:37 -0500 Message-ID: <002201c2e703$cabdcdf0$aa8ffea9@abyss> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2616 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org All, My current mail storage server is a C600 w/512MB and ~54GB of RAID5 (amr0, Series 466). The machine (and drives) are coming up on 3 years of age, and I'm ready to replace it. Performance has been acceptable, but not stellar. The question of the day, is do I build a 3ware RAID5 solution (with like 7*40GB drives of RAID5 and a hot spare), or do I stick with SCSI with something like a Supermicro server (http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/SUPERServer/SuperServer6021H.htm) with an Adaptec U160 0-channel RAID controller and 5*36GB and a hot spare. Besides NFS, this machine will also be running a MySQL server with 1 or 2 very small databases (for storing the vpopmail database). Comments? How well does the Adaptec stuff work? I've used their 2940 controllers, but never their RAID stuff. If I should stay away from Adaptec, what other solutions are reccomended for U160 or U320 RAID5? How well does the 3Ware controller work in terms of hot-swap-ability and automatic rebuilds of a failed drive? Will swapping and/or a rebuild require a reboot of the machine? Also, with a 3Ware controller, am I still tying up the CPU on disk IO? Or does this behave more like a SCSI solution at this point? TIA, -- Troy Settle Pulaski Networks http://www.psknet.com 540.994.4254 ~ 866.477.5638 Pulaski Chamber 2002 Small Business Of The Year To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message