On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 07:42:00PM +0100, Nicos Gollan wrote:
| On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:58:16 -0500
| "Derrick 'dman' Hudson" <dman@dman13.dyndns.org> wrote:
|
| > I now need to buy some hardware to set up a 2-disk RAID-1 array for a
| > server. The server will run debian with kernel 2.6. The cost
| > (money-wise) is not really an issue. The disks are ATA/133 (already
| > purchased). Which would you recommend, and why?
| >
| > Promise FastTrak TX2000 controller
| > with 2 Promise SuperSwap 1000 host-swappable drive bays
| >
| > 3Ware Escalade 7006-2 controller (or 7506-4LP model)
| > with 1 3Ware RDC-400 hot-swappable drive cage
|
| I'd definitely go for the 3Ware because it has better driver support.
| The driver is developed by 3Ware directly and supports all the features
| (there's even monitoring software) while Promise has a rather bad
| history when it comes to Linux drivers.
Interesting - 2 out of 2 votes against Promise. I was under the
impression that both brands were good and worked well with linux.
(however I've never had any hardware from either, yet)
| > Say, what's the difference between a 32-bit/66MHz and a 64-bit/66MHz
| > PCI card? Are there limitations as to what motherboards they will
| > work on? This particular machine is an older PII.
|
| The 64bit cards essentially have a longer connector which can cause
| hardware problems if you don't have a slot that has some unobstructed
| space where those pins would go. The 3Ware cards should - judging from
| the vendor information - work in 32bit slots, but I guess there can be
| the odd problem with some firmware revisions.
Ok, thanks.
| > --
| > \begin{humor}
| > Disclaimer:
| > If I receive a message from you, you are agreeing that:
| > 1. I am by definition, "the intended recipient"
| > 2. All information in the email is mine to do with as I see fit and
| > make
| > such financial profit, political mileage, or good joke as it
| > lends itself to. In particular, I may quote it on USENET or
| > the WWW.
| > 3. I may take the contents as representing the views of your
| > company. 4. This overrides any disclaimer or statement of
| > confidentiality that may
| > be included on your message
| > \end{humor}
| Humor noted, but that sig is a wee bit long... Also:
It is a little long, but it's only one of many chosen at random. A
little extra length on occaision isn't too bad, IMO.
| - (La)TeX doesn't come with a "humor" environment
True, but neither does HTML have a <humor> tag; and I thought an
HTML/XML tag wouldn't look as nice.
| - you should consider using an {itemize}
"enumerate" would give closer results (numbers instead of bullets) but
see above - the markup is meant only to clarify to readers that the
text is meant as a humorous spoof on the all-too-common "this message
is confidential" type disclaimers. :-) (it's not my original work -
I copied it from that web site with the writeup about how pointless
the disclaimers are)
On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 10:25:56AM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
| 32bit pci ... cheaper motherboard ( say $50 - $200 range )
|
| 64bit pci ... $250 - $500 motherboards
| - 64bit pci cards are also more expensive
I was actually looking at it from the other perspective - the
motherboard is already here (32-bit PCI bus) - but I didn't know what
sort of (in)compatibility a newer card would have on the existing bus.
| you can obviously transfer more data on 64bit pci w/o running
| into bandwidth/bottleneck problems on the pci slots
Yeah.
| if $$$ is readily available .. buy the 3ware
|
| if raid monitoring is an issue ... use sw raid1 instead
|
| nobody recommends promise hw raid controllers ( doesnt "work right" )
As I mentioned above I find it interesting that both of you supported
the 3Ware and didn't even give Promise a second thought.
| work right is: ...
|
| - no data loss ... no hand holding ..
|
| - pull the disk out while you're writing a 2GB file to disks
| and insert a fresh disk snd see what happens
| ( a good raid1 should merrily just write and mirror itself
| ( to the new/freshly inserted disk
|
| - while the disk ( hda/ sda ) is out...
| reboot the system and see if you can do a handsoff
| ( keyboardless ) boot
I agree on these points. "work right" means no data loss in every
situation except if both disks crash simultaneously (which is a disk
error outside the RAID system's control).
Thanks for the information!
-D
--
Emacs is a nice operating system, it lacks a decent editor though
www: http://dman13.dyndns.org/~dman/ jabber: dman@dman13.dyndns.org
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