Topic: Recommendations on storage for about 100GB disk for 100 user

[Todd Pearsall]

I apologize if this is considered off topic, but the folks on the list have the most real world experience with doing what I'm looking at on this platform.

I'm specing a new SME box for 50-100 users to mostly support file sharing, maybe some light web hosting which puts me between a category 3 and 4 server.  I'm planning to buy as server class case (lots of bays) and a good motherboard (1 CPU, since 2 seems unneccesary based on Mitel specs) and probably 512MB RAM.

As much as I'd love to go with (2) 120GB IDE drives and software RAID-1 for cost reasons it sounds like SCSI is the way to go.  Unfortunately I have limited experience with SCSI controllers and would love some recommendations on controllers and drives that people have had good experience with on SME and are cost effective.  I'm targeting around 100GB of disk available for users.  Is something like one of the mid-range adaptec controllers and (4) 36GB Cheetah drives in RAID 5 the way to go or is there a better option?

Thanks,
Todd

[Jeff C]

If you are spec'ing high speed SCSI drives, by the time you have bought at least 3 drives and the controller card to run them RAID5, you will have spent the same or more money that 2 IDE drives and a hardware hot-swap RAID1 controller.

Take a look at Darrell May's site.  He has a very inexpensive IDE RAID1 setup.  (www.myezserver.com)

If you are looking for RAID5 for expandability, that is a good reason to make that move, but for just redundancy in a small system (~100gig) the IDE solution will certainly be the easiest to install and support.

-jeff

[Ari Novikoff]

Jeff C wrote:
> If you are looking for RAID5 for expandability, that is a
> good reason to make that move, but for just redundancy in a
> small system (~100gig) the IDE solution will certainly be the
> easiest to install and support.

Actually, if you're planning on using the 10K RPM SCSI drives, you'll actually have better performance and throughput from SCSI than you will through IDE.

Not to mention that SCSI is more practical for a server environment that handles simultaneous multiple requests as it's designed to handle that bandwidth. IDE, as practical as it is, has it's limitations... multiple user environments is one of them.

To make a long-winded reply even longer,  compare the performance if you want by copying a 100MB file across SCSI drives vs IDE. BIG difference.  (hey - copy a block of small files too to be fair )

Ari

[Todd Pearsall]

Thanks for the feedback.  I need the redundancy of RAID-1 or RAID-5.  I was heading SCSI RAID5 purely for throughput vs software RAID-1 with 2 IDE drives assuming for 50-100 users I HAD to go SCSI, even though it's 3x-5x the cost for the same storage.  

Is that a reasonable assumption?

I'm embassed that I've been leaching the excellent contributed how-tos and software from http://myezserver.com and didn't even consider their HW offering while looking into this.  I'm there right now...

- Todd

[Tom Keiser]

I think the Adaptec 2100S adapter would do your job just fine, but don't be certain until you try that it will run on SME 5.1.2. (Adaptec does provide drivers for e-smith 4.1.2). Look back in the forum for entries on the Adaptec 2400A card (ide raid) and the assertion that the drivers are the same as for the 2100S scsi controller and the further assertion that someone compiled them for kernel 2.2.19-7.0.8. Others have tried that compiled driver with no success, but I can't comment on why.

I agree that SCSI raid/drives is a better solution.

Regards,

Tom

Todd Pearsall wrote:
>
> I apologize if this is considered off topic, but the folks on
> the list have the most real world experience with doing what
> I'm looking at on this platform.
>
> I'm specing a new SME box for 50-100 users to mostly support
> file sharing, maybe some light web hosting which puts me
> between a category 3 and 4 server.  I'm planning to buy as
> server class case (lots of bays) and a good motherboard (1
> CPU, since 2 seems unneccesary based on Mitel specs) and
> probably 512MB RAM.
>
> As much as I'd love to go with (2) 120GB IDE drives and
> software RAID-1 for cost reasons it sounds like SCSI is the
> way to go.  Unfortunately I have limited experience with SCSI
> controllers and would love some recommendations on
> controllers and drives that people have had good experience
> with on SME and are cost effective.  I'm targeting around
> 100GB of disk available for users.  Is something like one of
> the mid-range adaptec controllers and (4) 36GB Cheetah drives
> in RAID 5 the way to go or is there a better option?
>
> Thanks,
> Todd

[Boris]

Todd,
If its just for "support file sharing" as mentioned in the original post, you may get away with IDE, as this likely just occasional file download/install, but if its heavily used for users file storage as well, you will be better off with SCSI while serving more then 10-20 users.
One of my bigger SME servers is DELL2550 with built in PERC 3 RAID (4 SCSI drives RAID5). Installation was a breeze. Controller supported with no additional drivers. Performance  excellent. Smaller servers for less then 10 users offer great performance on fast IDE drives. Same goes for Web/Mail/internet gateway servers.
512 Mb of RAM sounds overkill for file/web sharing. If you don’t heavily use SQL and other server based applications, you likely will not use more then 128 MB.
You also can save on CPU if you don’t use SQL. Go with Celeron J.
Invest some money into the GOOD tape backup. Its your live saver.