[Hardware] Good Server I/O on-the-cheap: ASL Monarch 811x with CentOS 4.2 ...

[subsolar at subsolar.com (Paul)]

On Sun, 2005-11-20 at 23:06 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Since good server designs have come up in the past, I wanted to point
> out a "low-cost" server option that has good I/O, and the vendor offers
> _your_choice_ of not only Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but
> _also_ CentOS _shipped_ with it!
<SNIP>
> Unless you just want a 2 SATA drive version (the 8110 or 14" shallow
> 8115), the 8114 offers up to 4 SATA hot-swap bays in a sub-20" deep 1U
> rackmount:  
>   http://www.aslab.com/products/storage/monarch8114.html  
> 
> They seem to be supporting the latest 3Ware Escalade 9550SX, which it
> too new to trust IMHO.  But if they feel differently, I'd trust them.
> At the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if they'd sell it with a
> Escalade 8506 series instead -- which I do trust (especially since with
> only 4 drives, I'd probably create a RAID-10 volume), and only default
> to the 9550SX because most customers want RAID-5.

The Sun Fire x2100 looks to be in about the same ballpark features &
price wise, though I admit I did not look that close into the specs.

Any opinions on this box?

Paul