Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 22:12:32 -0800 From: "Kulraj Gurm (bosa.ca account)" <kulraj@bosa.ca> To: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net>, <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Server MB suggestions? Message-ID: <00d201c0b684$e96ac200$64c8a8c0@asknet.com> References: <006301c0b647$b8584620$0464a8c0@pnt004>
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Hey Ed, You buy SCSI not for the speed but for the reliability. 6 months down the road will you be able to handle 2 or 3 day downtime if the IDE drive fails? SCSI has a much higher MTBF, thats why I use SCSI in my mission critical machines. Cheaping out has a nasty habit of coming back and biting you sometime down the road. Besides SCSI isn't that expensive anymore. Hope my two bits worth helps! Regards, Kulraj Gurm MBS Computers Ltd. ps. in case anyone is wondering MTBF : mean time between failures ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net> To: <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "'Michael VanLoon'" <MichaelV@EDIFECS.COM>; "'Joseph Gleason'" <clash@fireduck.com> Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 2:54 PM Subject: RE: Server MB suggestions? I don't doubt any of the good advice to use SCSI. I know that it performs much better than IDE. But do I really need it right at the beginning? I am *starting* an ISP in rural western PA with a 1.5Mbs backbone to Sprint. For the first year I don't expect the number of customers to exceed 600. Will that many 56K dialup users generate enough disk i/o to reach the limits of IDE? Probably not (if I'm wrong here please don't hesitate to correct me). These servers will primarily host home directories that hold email and personal web pages, provide DNS, RADIUS, and sendmail services. Apache will run on a seperate server and will be dedicated to web hosting. Will any of these services be highly disk intensive operations for the number of users and size of my backbone? When my customer count increases to the point that justifies SCSI then I'll pay the price. Is my reasoning faulty? > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael VanLoon [mailto:MichaelV@EDIFECS.COM] > Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 3:29 PM > To: 'Joseph Gleason'; Ed Henderson; freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: RE: Server MB suggestions? > > > I wouldn't recommend building a server with IDE drives, but > maybe that's > just me... > > If I were building a production server with performance in > mind, I'd go > RAID-10 (or RAID 0+1, depending on what you want to call it > -- either way > it's striping without parity, on top of mirrors). I don't > know of any IDE > solutions capable of doing that that. And even if there > were, you couldn't > add enough drives to really make it worthwhile. > > Finally, (some) SCSI RAID controllers will let you > dynamically expand the > volume, if you need to add more drives later. > > I have used DPT (now Adaptec) RAID controllers with great success. Be > careful because Adaptec has two lines. The line they > developed themselves, > which is rather underwhelming, and the line they acquired > when they bought > DPT. > > > From: Joseph Gleason [mailto:clash@fireduck.com] > > Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 12:15 PM > > > > I can answer at least a few questions. > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net> > > To: <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG> > > Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:23 > > Subject: Server MB suggestions? > > > > > > > I am planning to use FreeBSD as my primary OS for an ISP that I am > > starting. I am beginning my research for the best > > motherboard/hardware to > > use for a production environment. One that is reliable and > > performs well > > (with reliable being the number > > > one priority!). I plan to build the server myself. My > > background has > > been in Solaris on Sun equipment so most of the hardware > choices were > > already made for me! > [...] > > > 2. What IDE controllers do your recommend? Or would SCSI > > be better (but > > more costly)? I want to use at least RAID1 mirroring for > > some redundancy. > > > > I strongly recommend IBM deskstar drives with Promise IDE > > controlers. I > > have had great experience with those. They are fairly cheap > > and have great > > performance. If you need any sort of RAID, looks into 3ware > > ide raid cards > > (http://www.3ware.com/). Just remember, RAID does not > > protect you from > > opperator error or hackers deleting all your files. Since > > you are also > > asking about tape stuff, I assume you are aware of this. ;-) > > See above... > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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