I have about 3.5TB of fileservers running on 3Ware IDE RAID cards. I am pretty happy with them. They are very well supported under Linux (in the kernel since 2.2.15). They have a separate controller for each drive, so you avoid many of the limitations of IDE. The 8 port card can give you 1280GB of drives (1120GB at RAID5) if needed.
Cases to build your own fileserver with 8 drives are hard to come by. We have an Antec SX1440 and it sucks (IMHO). I wouldn't buy it again. For the last server we built, I used a 'Small Cube Server' case from California PC (www.calpc.com) ~$400. It is pretty decent, I have a couple of complaints, but it works. It's the best I have found so far. I would recommend the redundant power supply.
Don't buy a desktop or workstation motherboard. We have used the following boards and I haven't been 100% satisfied with any of them....
Tyan Tiger MPX (Dual Athlon board with 64bit/66MHz PCI, AMD MPX chipset) Asus P2B-DS (Dual PIII board, BX chipset) Tyan Thunder (Dual PIII board with onboard everything, GX chipset)
I would recommend looking at a motherboard with a ServerWorks chipset, they are designed to be servers. Their (onboard) IDE and Video performance are terrible, but they can really pump out the data. I plan on going with a ServerWorks chipset for our next server.
I will never buy another IBM drive! Out of 50 drives, I sent back 10. Out of 60 Maxtor drives, I have sent back 1. I buy Maxtor or Seagate now. I have about 30 80GB drives and a dozen 160GB drives and I have had no problems.
Since you said a sysadmin will not always be around, I would recommend a DLT changer or LTO drive for backup. If a user has to change multiple tapes, it is going to be a hassle and they are going to forget. So I would recommend a drive (or library) that can back up all the data in one go. That means a DLT8000 library (40-80GB/tape) or an LTO drive (100-200GB/tape). I have heard good things about LTO, but I haven't used one. Personally I don't really like DLT, but it is VERY popular.
If you have any questions, or would like to see some of what we have done at Frantic, email me privately.
shawn
-----Original Message----- From: roundtable-admin@muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-admin@muug.mb.ca]On Behalf Of Brock Wolfe Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 7:07 PM To: roundtable@muug.mb.ca Subject: [RndTbl] Server config
I am looking at building a high reliability, fault tolerant file server to store 300 plus GB worth of files. Reliability is needed b/c a sysadmin will not always be around/on-site to ensure full backups are made regularly. I am assuming RAID 5 array, for data and seperate drive(s) for OS (RH 7.x), redundant power supplies. Any suggestions (voice of experience) on: - Motherboard/CPU combo's - Server Cases - RAID host cards (3ware-IDE, Mylex-SCSI) - High(er) MTBF IDE, SCSI Hard drives (I don't want another 60/75GXP fiasco) <g>. - Tape drives (DLT, DAT, etc)
Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom.
Brock
_______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable