I would agree; SATA is more than just jumped up IDE but SCSI is the preferred choice if you can get the cash. I am going to get my suppler to put a SCSI option on paper and I will try and make a case for getting SCSI. In my size business, it might well be the case that this server may have to do a stint as a fall-over for the DB server. In this scenario SCSI would be best. I do like the idea of having a separate OS disk. Upgrading the OS can be a real pain and I thought that if I kept the OS disk elsewhere I could destroy it and start again without too much trouble. I also like the idea of having a spare disk on hand in case of trouble ..etc. I guess another layout would be to have a mirrored pair (RAID 1) of the OS volume and the rest given over to data (RAID 5). On 8 Feb 2005 at 10:49, urgrue wrote: > > SATA is for game computers and highend workstations. Use SCSI for > > servers and hardware RAID not software RAID. IBM has 20KRPM SCSI > > drives now and with the Ultra160 wide channels, data flow just > > screams. > > I don't quite agree. SATA is excellent and significantly more > affordable than SCSI. I would not recommend normal PATA IDE for > anything, SATA for almost everything, and SCSI only for very high-end > situations where money is not a concern. For the vast majority of RAID > scenarios I would recommend SATA. > I'm very wary of software RAID, although I have used it in a few > scenarios and it does do the job. But if nothing else, its much easier > on the linux side if its a hardware solution, as linux will just see it > as a single disk. > > > 4 drives with a RAID 5 over three drives with one hot-spare is a very > > efficient configuration. > > Yes, it is. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you have a good > system set up to send you an alert when a drive fails, though. I had > one RAID array that due to configuration errors was unable to get its > alarm mail through when a drive failed. Eventually a second drive > failed, at which point we noticed it. Personally I got for RAID-10, > just to be on the safe side. Drives are so cheap these days that I > prefer to pay a little extra and gain that little bit of extra safety... > > > > My own thoughts were to keep the root file system outside of the > > > RAID. > > > > That is not necessary. Your hardware RAID arrays will look like > > individual drives to your software, treat them as such when you > > partition > > No it's not necessary. Personally however I do prefer to keep the OS on > its own disk. This makes it so much easier to fix OS software problems. > You can have an extra copy of the OS disk ready, so that in case of > software failure you can swap the backup right in and be up and running > in minutes instead of having to go through some rather more complicated > process of restoring an OS to an existing RAID array. > It also makes patches/upgrades much easier, as you can apply them to > the backup disk, swap, and see if everything is OK, and just swap back > if not. > It's all just one step more complicated if the OS is on the RAID array. > > > Why not. If your hard drive with SWAP on it goes down, wouldn't you > > like it to be as safe as the rest of the server? > > I keep swap, along with everything else OS-related, on the OS disk. The > RAID array I use just for data. > All in all, it's a matter of preference and depends on how you set up > your own systems, I wouldnt say there is any one correct answer. > > > Test it!: load up an OS, copy some large pictures to it, large > > documents, and some third party software or something you can test. > > Pull out a drive, test the pics, docs, and software to make sure they > > will work while the drive is off-line, while the drive is being > > rebuilt and once the system if finished rebuilding. Test as much as > > you can with your new RAID before you trust it to a live, production > > server. If you insist on playing about with a SW-RAID, break it and > > make sure you can reboot LOL. > > I cant agree more. After you install a RAID, TEST it every way you can. > It's a nightmare situation if you realize youve lost all your data > because of some misconfiguration or because something didnt work the > way you thought it was supposed to. > > urgrue > - > : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html ~~ Dermot Paikkos * dermot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Network Administrator @ Science Photo Library Phone: 0207 432 1100 * Fax: 0207 286 8668 - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
