[nycbug-talk] Server hardware

[Francisco Reyes]

Isaac Levy writes:

> Yeah.  Tradeoffs for high density- the boxes I get are pretty loaded-  
> dual Xeons, full size mboard, 4 drives, a 1u power supply that is big  
> enough to handle it all

Heat is not a problem?
I once was talking to a vendor about getting Dual opterons in a 1U and they 
said they only did those in 2U because of heat.


> for U in my enviornment, insomuch as rackspace to shuffle equipment  
> is way more valuable to me than space for depth.

Agree

> Yes- I have GCS build everything for me, and get my drives from  
> different vendors online.

You get them cheaper than from Lee?

>> Can they support 10K rpm drives?
 
> Sure- I'm assuming you mean SCSI there- these cases can be ordered  
> with either SATA or SCSI hot-swap backplane.

What SCSI controller/disks you going using?

Before I came to work at this compay they used plain 7200 RPM drives, but I 
think it was a "Startup cost issue" more than anything else.. now that we 
are more stable I am convincing the owner to go with 10K IDE for speed. For 
large NFS (ie 1TB) we still using 7200RPM IDEs. but they have 16MB cache. 
the cost of going with SCSI would be too much. Specially that we are doing 
RAID 10 with 2 Hot spares. With 400GB drives we can get 1.2TB of usable 
space on a 3U (8 drives).

> After my email in this thread Friday, I got my RMA conformation from  
> 3Ware- they're shipping me an SX card to 'see if that works', and if  
> so, I'll send them the other card.

The SX is working for us.
 
> How do YOU like 3ware?

Truth be told I really would prefer we were using SCSI, but cost is a big 
issue. I was also looking into Areca cards, but the company we are buying 
from recommended we bought the 3Ware.

> I'm assuming you trust/like the cards?

So far I have managed about 6 machines with them and have not had any 
problems so far with them. This accros different levels of 3Ware cards at 
different points in time. Since we started to standarize in them we have got 
3 of them. No problems of any kind so far.


> problem has sucked, but their support people have been awesome- and I  
> haven't found any RAID mfr. or card that's really been perfect...

I have also have very good responses from their support team. One of the 
reasons I am starting to standarize on them. 


>>> o 2TB volume limits in the card...  To my understanding, the  
>>> Areca  cards can make contiguous volumes over 2TB straight on the  
>>> card.

Nice...


> Yeah- these look quite nice- excepting the price...  I'm very tempted  
> to buy one and give it a whirl when I have the cashflow...

Agree. Also I only see 4+ port controllers from them. Would be nice if they 
had 2 port cards so one could buy/test them at a lower price.. Also many 
times all one needs is just 2 drives in a RAID 1..