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Date:      Sat, 08 Jan 2000 19:16:02 -0800
From:      "Randy A. Katz" <randyk@ccsales.com>
To:        Steve Kaczkowski <steve@inc.net>, dannyman <dannyman@dannyland.org>
Cc:        freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Reccomend RAID for FreeBSD + Cyrus
Message-ID:  <3.0.5.32.20000108191602.03a36270@ccsales.com>
In-Reply-To: <387423EB.EF2B3DD2@inc.net>
References:  <20000105165135.A29204@stumpy.dannyland.org>

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Hi Steve,

Can you get a reading of the drive statuses from FreeBSD?

At 11:11 PM 1/5/00 -0600, Steve Kaczkowski wrote:
>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
>
>
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