Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 08:16:25 -0800 From: "Goodleaf, John M" <jgoodlea@fhcrc.org> To: "'freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: yet another request for hardware rec. Message-ID: <B1C5649A402DD51190930002B330A181049EC156@shemp.fhcrc.org>
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I know these questions come up all the time, but I think it's okay, since no one ever tires of talking about good hardware. Also, hardware changes pretty frequently. I need backup/storage space. I know I could go tape or DVD RAM. But I want a machine running a true RAID to serve as storage space for various databases and so forth. Here's the trick: I want not to spend a ton of money. So I'm looking at getting five or so SATA drives of maybe 80 or 120GB apiece. Then I'd probably get the 8-port 3Ware SATA controller. SCSI would cost just too damn much money. Besides, SCSI drives are really, really loud (I have a machine with dual 15Krpm scsi drives and I can barely be in the same room with it). What I'd like is to identify a solid motherboard. I'm comfortable with a behind-the-curve processor, since the storage machine won't need much muscle of its own, but I would like it to have a 64/66 PCI slot for the SATA card. I know there's some performance drag with RAID5 and I want to crank out as much disk speed as possible. I have no particular preference on the AMD/Intel question. It seems that AMD generally gets you better bang for your buck, but it seems that an Intel board is more likely to have the 64/66 slot I long for. I don't know, and there's a bewildering array of MBs on the market. Any thoughts? Also, feel free to criticize the whole plan. If you've heard of a RAID appliance that doesn't cost $5K, I'm interested. Thanks, John PS I just thought of this: What about network bandwidth? Since I don't want to go to gigabit hardware on the network, is there a way I can install two or so 100M cards and bind them to one IP, just to increase the throughput?
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