[NTLUG:Discuss] looking for raid & controller advice

[Kevin Brannen]

Scott Hollomon wrote:

>3ware 7506-4LP is a great card, its running now in my web/mail server.  Disk 
>manager does indeed work under linux and can be configured to do things like 
>email you reports about the array on a periodic basis or notify you when/if a 
>drive fails.  It also has a Web based gui (think webmin) for checking on and 
>tweaking the raid array (I don't run that, I just ssh in and use the console 
>utitlity).  You need to configure the array from its BIOS tool before you 
>install the OS.  CentOS (really Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has drivers for the 
>card and recognizes it immediately without intervention and sees the array as 
>one big drive.
>
>...
>  
>

Thanks for the recommendation and the tips, and for answers to my 
questions!  It sounds like this will work for me.

Kevin

>
>On Saturday 04 December 2004 1:54 am, Kevin Brannen wrote:
>  
>
>>I need to build a file server for my church.  Rudundancy is a must,
>>since I've lost several drives in the recent past (I'm not too keen on
>>the WD2000 right now--I might even have some used ones to sell soon).
>>I'm thinking a cheap way to solve this (as opposed to buying a NAS
>>solution) is to get a semi-low cost computer, add 1G of RAM for lots of
>>cache, and stick a 3ware 7506-4LP in it with 3 250G EIDE drives in a
>>RAID-5 config, running Linux and serving the files out the Gb network
>>port with a Samba server.  (Yes, the 2 clients are Win2k, ugh!)  So far
>>so good.  I can get all the parts new, including a spare 4th drive for
>>$1500, maybe somewhat less.
>>
>>However, not ever having used any of the 3ware products with Linux, I've
>>got a few questions:
>>
>>    
>>
...