[NTLUG:Discuss] New Box

[David Neeley]

Hi, guys (and gals, too, for that matter!)

I'm about to experiment with a RAID controller and a Compaq expansion box 
containing six SCSI drives I picked up fairly cheaply. If all goes as I 
think it will, I'll have a dual-channel RAID that should blow away the 
ATA100 drive in sustained throughput. Among the issues I must deal with is 
that of drivers for the relevant RAID cards to work in Linux (I'll be 
trying a DPT card and a Mylex one).

If you shop carefully, you should be able to pick up this kind of setup for 
$500 or so, if it becomes an issue. In fact, once I have learned what I 
intend to, you could pick up mine for about that! (I should add that the 
drives are 4.2 GB each...allowing for parity, this should give 21 MB or so 
of very fast, reliable storage. I have seen various of these RAID cards 
going at First Saturday for $200 or less; the RAID cabinets with drives can 
run $300 or so--if not less. Using larger drives can often be an option, 
too). I'm only doing this to increase my hands-on knowledge, as I don't 
need the RAID capabilities in my day-to-day work.

For these prices, you won't have the latest SCSI 160 interfaces. This often 
makes little difference unless you're doing a lot of streaming video or 
some such. Also, burst information rates is highly over-hyped. Sustained 
transfer is often more to the point. As good as software RAID and drive 
caching can be, there are many circumstances where an intelligent caching 
RAID controller is superior. With its own intelligence operating the array, 
and with physical cache memory on board, it is surprising how high the 
rates of sustained transfer can get in many applications. The physical 
subsystem can often flood the data bus (which is why a dual-channel setup 
is good) for sustained periods of time. Drive accesses can be somewhat 
covered over by the cache memory.

I hope this helps.

David




At 12:08 PM 5/4/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>I am running SuSE 7.1 on a 1.2G T-Bird.  I am using
>the IWill KK266 mother board which lets me run the CPU
>at 266 and still use PC133 memory, so I cannot comment
>on DDR memory.  I have been running it for about a
>month without incident.  I will agree with the
>statement about performance being I/O bound.  My ATA
>100 drive is the stumbling point on performance.


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com