Linux file server

[cliff at cliffmeyers.com]

Mark, Robert,


Thanks to both of you for your input.

The file server is going to hold data for a 15-person office, where there should
*never* be more than 5 concurrent users.  In fact, I'd be surprised if more than
3 people were actually copying / saving files at a time, but I think 5 is a very
safe number to use.

I know it's foolish to buy a system without the capacity for some growth, but in
our situation we won't hire more than 1 person a year for the next 5 years.

I must admit that I have a hard time believing the IDE drives will hurt
performance too much.  I run IDE drives on my web servers and those puppies are
fast, even when they're running Apache, PHP and MySQL all on the same box.  Is it
because each request is small that I don't run into issues with IDE's inability
to multitask?  Would become more apparent on a file server, where the typical
file being copied is at least 100K?


-Cliff





On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 01:26:26 -0400, "Mark Musone" wrote:

> 
> The most serious implication (which is quote often serious) is that fact
> that IDE is not a multitasking protocol. So performance, expecially with
> a raid-5 setup is usually poor. (every drive has to wait for for all the
> drives to send a command and get an answer back) in a raid-5 setup where
> your essentially striping bits across disks..this suffers dramatically..
> One solution, if steadfast on still going with IDE raid is to buy IDE
> raid cards that have built in buffering. This way it sends and queues up
> the queries in memory..
> 
> If this is NOT being used for performance reasons, i.e. it's just an
> office type file server light to medium use, it shouldn’t be a big
> problem..
> 
> One other caveat from what I've seen personally is that the IDE drives
> nowadays are horrible as far as reliability. Mi'm lucky if a brand new
> IDE drive lasts a year nowadays. My old IDE drives from 5 years ago are
> however still humming along
> 
> -Mark
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org] On Behalf Of
> cliff at cliffmeyers.com
> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:47 AM
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Subject: Linux file server
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> 
> Does anyone have experience running a large (500 GB - 1 TB) RAID 5 array
> using
> IDE drives with Linux?  SCSI seems to be the standard used for these
> kind of
> systems but it easily doubles the price if not more.  Are there any
> serious
> implications of using IDE with a large RAID array?  Thanks a bunch.
> 
> 
> -Cliff
> 
> ---
> Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.512 / Virus Database: 309 - Release Date: 8/19/2003
>  
> 
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.512 / Virus Database: 309 - Release Date: 8/19/2003
>