Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 10:57:05 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Tao <taob@vex.net> To: Nathan Stratton <nathan@netrail.net> Cc: FREEBSD-QUESTIONS-L <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: News server Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.94.970111105517.12622F-100000@vex.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970109095731.21599A-100000@netrail.net>
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On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, Nathan Stratton wrote:
>
> I am planing on adding to main news servers to feed a network of
> news feeders. I plan on using P5 200 with 256 megs ram and 2 9 gig
> WSCSI for spool and 1 4 gig WSCSI for /. My questions is would I get
> any speed increase if I went with P6 200 and not the P5 200?
No, I don't think there will be any noticeable performance
increase. News servers are typically I/O-bound and not CPU-bound.
I'll repost a reply I had just sent to inet-access, although the
numbers will be different for you (unless you also want 40GB of spool
;-) ).
>>>>>
On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, DeWayne Ashcraft wrote:
>
> Are there any drawbacks to using a 45GB disk array for the news
> server? Configuration would have 5 9.1GB ultra wide disks, 7200
> RPM.
Space and expense considerations aside, I would instead buy three
ranks of 7x2GB 7200 rpm drive arrays, one ultra-wide controller per
rank. Stripe your filesystems *across* the controllers using an
appropriate strip width (it may be non-obvious what the optimal width
is, depending on your OS). 24 drives (3 spare), 3 nice rackmount
cases and 3 Adaptec 2940UW's will cost around $15000 US if I've done
my currency conversion correctly.
This setup is more for concurrency than for capacity. I would aim
to limit your spool filesystem to about 50% just before an expire
runs. Don't worry about the unused space... it will eventually fill. ;-)
Correct striping will tend to localize disk accesses related to
article retrieval to a single disk, leaving the remaining drives free
to service other concurrent requests.
<<<<<
--
Brian Tao (BT300, taob@risc.org)
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"
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