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January 9th, 2006 00:00
First server questions :)
Currently our office is using a workstation as a file server. We have a total of 4 workstations (including the one shared on the server). We mainly use the server for joint access to access DB files. we were thinking of moving to a dedicated server as things can get rather slow at times (we're hoping a dedicated server would help anyway?)
Our total storage needs are not large -- we currently are using a 200GB sata drive that is around 60GB full. With this in mind, I am assuming a RAID 1 setup (or possibly RAID 10) would be our best options. We've had our network drive crash before -- and while we had backups and even a spare drive, the restore process still took several hours out of the day. We're hoping our server would both increase performance and help reduce problems like this.
I'm new to servers, so I'm going to list a bunch of questions and hopefully some of them can get answered. It's worth keeping in mind that we're a very small operation and balancing costs with performance is a top priority. My current plan would be to have two SATA2 200GB drives with NCQ in RAID 1 (along with a pentium D server with 1gb of ram).
1) If I do this, can I have keep the OS on a smaller 3rd drive that is not part of the above array? I assume not everything has to be attached to the RAID controller but it's worth making sure. Should I mirror this drive as well?
2) What's a good RAID card for doing this? I assume software RAID is not the best option? Or is it ok for basic mirroring? Do most RAID 1 cards support hot sparing?
3) What are my options besides dell? I'd like a machine that can hold more than 4 drives but I don't really want to make the jump to xeon (or dual xeon) processors. With a 4 drive limit, it seems like the cheaper dell servers are pretty limited in their expandability-- no different than my optiplex actually.
Generally comments, thoughts, and suggestions are of course appreciated
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lpprikej
650 Posts
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January 12th, 2006 12:00
Why not go with 3 or 4 drives in a Raid-5 config. Software Raid will cause more downtime in the event of a failure. Why NOT go with Dell. Use a PERC4 controller and do SCSI U320 drives? This will be very fast and reliable. And if you lose a drive, just hot swap it and it will automatically rebuild. And if the O.S. is on this Array, then (technically)you should never have to worry about reinstalling it.
Just a thought.
Jason
warwizard55
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January 12th, 2006 15:00
NemesisDB
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January 12th, 2006 22:00
warwizard55
720 Posts
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January 13th, 2006 12:00
The PE1800 can take 6 SCSI hard drives internally...
Check out the PV220 at www.dell.com . The biggest cost of an external array will be the drives themselves. The PV220 can be shared between two systems devoting 7 drive slots to each server. It will support use as a quroum drive for a cluster of two servers as well. It can also be configured with only a single SCSI Channel connector to save a little cash.
You could also go out on EBAY and find PV200's and PV210's that are being retired if speed of the external array is not critical. (the PV200 supports 8 drives, the PV210, 12 drives) If you go with the older external arrays you will not need U320 drives as the interfaces and BP will cause them to auto negoiate down to 80 or 160 speeds depending on the exact mix of components in the boxes.
warwizard
P.S. I cannot list prices here, this will be read for months or perhaps years, and any prices I put here would not be accurate for long.
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=pv220sapp&s=bsd
Message Edited by Warwizard on 01-13-2006 08:29 AM