From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Dec 9 19:26:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from vinyl.sentex.ca (vinyl.sentex.ca [209.112.4.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B568C1515D for ; Thu, 9 Dec 1999 19:26:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Received: from granite.sentex.net (granite-atm.sentex.ca [209.112.4.1]) by vinyl.sentex.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA44701; Thu, 9 Dec 1999 22:26:53 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Received: from ospf-mdt.sentex.net (ospf-mdt.sentex.net [205.211.164.81]) by granite.sentex.net (8.8.8/8.6.9) with SMTP id WAA18466; Thu, 9 Dec 1999 22:26:52 -0500 (EST) From: mike@sentex.net (Mike Tancsa) To: drew@penguin.ipunet.com ("Andrew G. Luyt") Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Seeking RAID & SCSI advice Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 03:26:51 GMT Message-ID: <3850713c.1216402614@mail.sentex.net> References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent .99e/32.227 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 9 Dec 1999 11:48:00 -0500, in sentex.lists.freebsd.questions you wrote: >Hello, > >I am putting together a server, which will be used for database-driven >web sites, using apache, php, and MySQL, and running on 3.3-STABLE. > >I am trying to decide on a good RAID implementation for this system, >and my choices, due to budget & available hardware, are limited. >I have available to me a Mylex Acceleraid 250 Ultra2 SCSI to PCI RAID >card, which I could use for hardware-driven RAID. Alternatively, I could >use an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and vinum for RAID. I can't use both cards >for the one machine (budget), so my choice is one or the other. Well, I have used the MegaRAID card on current and the Mylex 960PD and PL card on STABLE. The AMI card is nicer in that all the logic is built into the BIOS, so you dont have to boot to DOS to manage the array. Unfortunately, the AMI drivers dont work on stable for me, so I cant say how well it functions. I have been using the Mylex card on an internal SQUID box with success, but the performance numbers are not that impressive, but I didnt get a chance to really test things. But the main thing for RAID for us, is reliability. Another option you _might_ consider are some of the external IDE RAID boxes... They take cheap big IDE drives and present them on a SCSI interface. The idea sounds appealing, but I have no idea what they are like in the real world. I have a friend who uses one with LINUX, and he says they are really great and work as advertised. >In regards to the AHA-2940U2W, I found numerous references to it, >Does anyone know if this problem has been resolved? A lot of people use them and some very heavy environments, so I would say yes. We use one with a couple of 10,000 RPM IBM drives on a PII450 SMP box that is a fairly heavily hit web server without issue. ---Mike Mike Tancsa (mdtancsa@sentex.net) Sentex Communications Corp, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada "Given enough time, 100 monkeys on 100 routers could setup a national IP network." (KDW2) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message