On Jul 24, 2012 5:08 AM, "Stan Hoeppner" <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/23/2012 11:05 AM, Shaffin Bhanji wrote:
> > I am thinking of the Norco 16/20 hotswap and a 2x operton QC CPU m/b
> > but wasnt sure what a solid performing m/b would be that will work
> > well with the LSI? Any thoughts?
>
> You didn't even mention the drives. The drives are the most important
> ingredient of an IO server. If you want low latency high throughput
> random IO, you want 10k or 15k drives (or SSD), and you can use fewer of
> them WRT 7.2k SATA drives. No matter what you do, do NOT use parity
> RAID, i.e. RAID5/6, for your workload. You will horribly regret it and
> curse your new machine. It won't be the hardware's fault, but yours,
> for choosing the wrong RAID level, and then not configuring your storage
> stack properly to work with it. Even it if configure everything
> properly for RAID5/6, the performance will still be an order of
> magnitude lower than RAID10, for a random IOPS workload.
>
> If this machine will strictly be an IO server, not running any VMs or
> other applications locally, then you're wasting your money with a dual
> socket 8 core system. IO servers don't need lots of CPU cycles and
> typically don't need lots of RAM. What they do need is fast disks and a
> good RAID controller. If dual core AMD server processors were still
> available I'd still be using them in storage servers. The extra two
> cores go wasted 99% of the time in such a machine. Even the 2nd core in
> a dual core chip goes wasted most of the time. The only time it comes
> in handy is processing NIC/HBA interrupts under very heavy IO load.
> Installing irqbalance is a necessity with such an IO server.
>
> > Thanks my hands are now itching for this project to be completed :-)
>
> As I said, the SuperMicro box with 8x 10K drives in RAID10 and the LSI
> will run circles around a 16/20 bay box with 7.2k drives in RAID6, with
> a random IO workload. This assumes a production environment with a real
> workload. If this is a home/hobby server, you may not notice the
> difference as you'll never sufficiently tax the IO subsystem.
>
> --
> Stan
>
>
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Hi guys,
Very interesting read!
I apologize for being OT, but where could one learn about storage systems (even such as the ones you mentioned earlier)? Any online resources or even books you could recommend?
Thanks