I'm building an nfs server to export home directories to a few login servers used somewhat heavily by a few hundred people. Additionally, on the array will be a bunch of web content and mysql data files. I'm currently thinking of a few different configurations, all using four drives in the 180-250gb range. I could get sata or udma drives, i could go raid5 or raid10, and i could do this in linux software raid (using, say, a pair of promise ultra100s to give me four udma ports, or with an SATA card), using 3ware's UDMA four-port escalade, or with 3ware's new sata escalade. What are the compelling reasons for using sata over udma? I've had really good experiences with linux software raid, but always in small workgroup or personal file servers. I'm wondering if this sort of big, random, heavy load will drag down an otherwise speedy box. Is it worth it to just drop the extra $300 and go with hardware raid? as quality as linux software raid is, i'm somehow still more comfortable just leaving it to hardware. what sort of ideas or experiences can you guys share? i'm going for cost first (i've got a $1k budget or so), reliability and stability second, and speed third. -j -- -------------------------------------------------------- Rev. Jeffrey Paul -datavibe- sneak@datavibe.net aim:x736e65616b pgp:0x15FA257E phone:8777483467 70E0 B896 D5F3 8BF4 4BEE 2CCF EF2F BA28 15FA 257E -------------------------------------------------------- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html