From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Aug 2 20:49:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from demai02.mw.mediaone.net (demai02.mw.mediaone.net [24.131.1.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E2861521A for ; Mon, 2 Aug 1999 20:49:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mtaylor@cybernet.com) Received: from cybernet.com (nic-c12-242.mw.mediaone.net [24.131.12.242]) by demai02.mw.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA10366; Mon, 2 Aug 1999 23:47:08 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <37A666D3.3C6E8AFF@cybernet.com> Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 23:49:39 -0400 From: "Mark J. Taylor" Organization: Cybernet Systems Corp. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?ISO-9550?B?o8C359TCv82jwA==?= Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: High-end FreeBSD configration suggestion needed References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org If you are going for a RAID5 solution: Make sure that it is a totally hardware RAID solution, for now. AFAIK, FreeBSD does not support any RAID5 card (in RAID mode) except the DPT SmartRaid IV, which is broken hardware- it does not seem to generate completion interrupts (Simon Shapiro can correct me if I'm wrong here) when in a RAID5 configuration, which causes extremely poor read and write performance. Simon is currently working on an I2O driver for the DPT SmartRaid V (et.al.) which should have better results. (We have one of the SmartRaid IV cards, and all that DPT can tell us is that it is a "known problem".) I'd use some external SCSI RAID5 tower that looked to any OS like a single SCSI disk. I belive that wcarchive has this kind of configuration. I don't have any specific recommendations in this area... Perhaps shortly (if I can convince the people here), we will see a public release of the vinum RAID5 software module. This decision is mostly in the hands of Lauren Works (lworks@cybernet.com). Please poke her with email if you'd like to see this feature unencumbered (Greg Lehey [grog@lemis.com]) wrote this for Cybernet under contract). Tell her I said "Hi". ;) -Mark Taylor NetMAX Developer mtaylor@cybernet.com NetMAX does FreeBSD 3.2! NetMAX does Linux 2.0.37/RedHat 5.2! http://www.netmax.com/ =?ISO-9550?B?o8C359TCv82jwA==?= wrote: > > Guys, we're looking at getting a high-end freebsd server. > What we have in mind is a Dual PIII-500/550mhz with RAID > The OS will be FreeBSD 3.2 > > Can anyone give me some recommedation on what type of > motherboard, RAID controller to get...etc? > > Thanks! > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message