Linux file server

[Mark Musone]

Seems ok..you can build it for half the price, but those prices are
definitely reasonable..

-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 1:12 PM
To: nflug at nflug.org
Subject: RE: Linux file server

Mark, Robert,


The server is used mostly to store Photoshop and Quark files that our
graphic
designers use (we're an advertising agency).  I figure that we can get
away with
IDE drives since the load isn't going to be super high; it's a pretty
small
office.

The RAID 5 is definitely hardware based.  The vendor I'm looking at
offers this
card: 3Ware Escalade 7506-8 Ultra ATA/133 RAID, 8 ports, 64-bit/66mhz --
more
info here: http://www.aslab.com/products/storage/sovereign5353.html.
These guys'
prices knock the socks off of some other systems I've seen offered from
other
specialty Linux vendors.  They have a 1 TB IDE based system around
$5,500 - the
SCSI variant for the same price is only 300 GB.

Thanks again for all the info.


-Cliff



On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 08:38:41 -0400, "Mark Musone" wrote:

> 
> 
> Yes, the file server is definitely writing a _lot_ more..
> Web servers are basically just read-only, and most mysql backends are
> quite small..
> 
> Heck, the worst that could happen is that you throw a few scsi drives
in
> for stuff that needs higher performance..or you just end up with a few
> desktop machines with lotsa lotsa space! :^)
> 
> 
> For the cost, it's most likely worth trying..i've got 1T at home, all
> IDE, for my files and also my mythtv (realtime video recording) and I
> haven’t had any problems..
> 
> Also, if your talking about copying files that are 100K, that’s not a
> problem at all.. if your talking about copying files that are 10M then
> you _may_ want to consider it more..
> 
> 
> Are you going to be using software raid or hardware raid out of
> curiosity?
> 
> 
> -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 8:24 AM
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Subject: RE: Linux file server
> 
> 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
> > 
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